Feller Favors Peer Learning in the Classroomby Howard W. Hewitt |
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Scott Feller is a scientist, college professor, parent, and a bit of a sheep herder.
He also is 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 College鈥檚 McLain-McTurnan-Arnold Excellence in Teaching Award Winner for 2009. Feller, who was promoted this year to full professor, has long been an accomplished scientist doing research on the interaction of biochemistry and technology. The recognition for his work with students in the classroom came as a surprise.
But students and colleagues put Feller on a level with any of 新澳门六合彩开奖直播鈥檚 great teachers. During the annual Awards Chapel presentation, Dean of the College Gary Phillips cited comments from students about Feller鈥檚 teaching methods.
鈥楬e is very thorough in presenting the material and very good at making difficult concepts clear. In class I would read the book and feel dazed, but when Professor Feller came to class, everything became clear. 鈥� He is the reason I became a major. 鈥� Summer research work was an incredibly, a great experience.鈥�
Praise also came from one of Feller's colleagues who has team-taught a Freshman Tutorial, Phillips said. 鈥業 learned a lot, got ideas that I have used since then in other classes鈥� his intellectual interests and abilities were obvious as he asked good questions and helped students develop their ideas and express them. His concern for student learning was obvious.鈥�
Feller cited the team-teaching experience as one of the things that keeps him fresh. "I鈥檓 almost always teaching (Chemistry 101) with someone different," Feller said. "(This year with Chem 101 and 111) I was teaching with people I鈥檇 never team taught with before. That makes it different because you get to hear the viewpoint of another. We try to work to different people鈥檚 strengths and you get the chance to learn something as well.
"If you team-teach those courses it鈥檚 harder to just dust off the same syllabus that you had the year before. It鈥檚 always a negotiation: 鈥榟ow much time are we going to spend on bonding, how much time we going to spend on this or that."
Students are quick to praise Feller鈥檚 work in the classroom and lab but the Professor said success is a 50-50 proposition. "I think there has to be a level of comfort between the students and faculty member," Feller said. "The faculty member has to feel comfortable doing their work and they have to know that they鈥檙e in it as a team with the students. Students have to understand we can make a mistake and come back the next day. The students understand that we don鈥檛 always all have the perfect answer every time. I鈥檓 not someone who can imagine giving a perfect lecture every day. I don鈥檛 know what a perfect lecture would look like. Students need to be comfortable and be able to ask questions. That鈥檚 one of the things I鈥檝e really liked about 新澳门六合彩开奖直播. We somehow have a mixture of a great deal of student respect for faculty yet at same time we have a classroom I would call casual in many ways. That mix for me, I find just right. As a teacher that鈥檚 what I really enjoy."
He admits that one of his biggest joys each year is teaching Chemistry 101, or an entry level class.
"We have a lot of students who haven鈥檛 had success in science before and they bring some baggage to the study of science," Feller explained. "They think, 鈥業鈥檓 not good at this. I鈥檝e had this class before and none of my experiments ever worked out. I never did figure that out in high school, Dr. Feller.鈥�
And Phillips pointed out at the Chapel Awards program that Feller is better than some people might realize. "At the risk of embarrassing him, I will offer one measure of his regard in scientific circles: the number of annual citations of his publications alone exceeds the sum total of the entire DePauw University science faculty."
Feller is a graduate of Willamette University in Oregon and holds his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Davis. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whitman College before coming to 新澳门六合彩开奖直播. He lives with his family on a farm outside of Crawfordsville. Each fall he and invites friends and family to the farm.
His involvement in the community and 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 community is another component that makes him a student favorite.
"I鈥檓 very much devoted to chemistry, science, and teaching but I have other interests," he said. "My children are now a senior and freshman in high school. We鈥檝e had a lot of activities in the community.
"As much as I see myself as a scientist, I also see myself as something more than that. For our students, I think that鈥檚 important too. I think they like to see that we have a whole life. That we have other people around us and other interests 鈥� even as crazy as raising sheep!"
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"I feel very humbled," he said.
His 11 years at 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 have allowed him to change the way he teaches and move away from the traditional lecture format. "I made it through last semester without ever giving a lecture," he said of his upper-level Physical Chemistry class. "We did the whole class with peer-led learning. We work our way through a series of harder and harder problems in groups of three or four students. I move around from team to team interjecting an idea or answer any questions. I鈥檝e gone to this inquiry-based learning where students are asked to do a lot of inquiring. You never really know what questions they鈥檙e going to ask from day to day."
"We have students who come in with that baggage and it鈥檚 tough for them to leave that behind. I鈥檓 very pleased that our introductory classes are set up for students to be successful. I鈥檓 not saying every student is successful, but it鈥檚 set up for every student to be successful in ways they haven鈥檛 been before with science. They can find out they鈥檙e better at this than they thought they were."