the art of teaching

UC Berkeley has long been noted for its excellent research capabilities while teaching, some may say, has tended to play second fiddle. In the College of Natural Resources, however, teaching is a priority, according to CNR professors who have been recognized by their students as outstanding teachers. Of the seven faculty members interviewed for this article, five have received Cal’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’s highest honor for teaching excellence.

Excellent teaching takes constant preparation to keep material up-to-date and engaging, and an ongoing commitment to student learning. Here’s what seven CNR faculty and three students say about the art of teaching continued on next page

“We are a university first. We have a responsibility to generate and disseminate information, and teaching is one of the primary ways we disseminate that information,” said Assistant Professor Whendee Silver, who joined the Division of Ecosystem Sciences faculty four years ago from Boston University. She was the recipient of a Dean’s Stellar Course Award with Keith Gilless in 1998.

“I feel a personal commitment and responsibility to further the next round of academic leaders through teaching. If I didn’t feel that way, I’d be working at a strictly research institution or for the government rather than at an academic institution,” she said.

“I don’t see any boundary between teaching and research,” added Don Kaplan, professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and 36-year veteran of the UC system. “They are mutually and reciprocally stimulating. I am a better teacher because I do research and because I can give personal insights into the subject matter, which simply would not be the same if I had depended on only secondary sources for this information.

“Similarly, being a teacher gives my research a better perspective and helps me to place the more detailed aspects of what I do in the broad context of knowledge in my field. Moreover, when I am writing scientific papers, I am teaching the same way I teach in the classroom. It is just that professional biologists are most of my audience,” continued Kaplan.

A 1976 recipient of a campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award, Kaplan usually teaches principles of plant morphology to upper division undergraduate and graduate students. This spring he is teaching a freshman seminar for the first time.

“More than anything else, I am teaching students that how we work cannot be separated from our culture. I want students to develop their critical thinking skills, to question. It really comes down to affecting students’ lives so that they become independent, thinking beings. That’s the long-term goal,” he said.

Howell Daly Environmental Science, Policy & Management1982

Lewis FeldmanPlant Biology1996

J. Keith GillessEnvironmental Science, Policy & Management1988

Donald KaplanPlant Biology1976

W. M. LaetschPlant Biology1974

Joe McBrideEnvironmental Science, Policy & Management1991

Vincent H. ReshEnvironmental Science, Policy & Management1995

Arnold SchultzEnvironmental Science, Policy & Management1992

Ronald StarkEnvironmental Science, Policy & Management1961

Paul ZinkeEnvironmental Science, Policy & Management1959

Teaching the Love of Learning at the Undergraduate Level

Even with his responsibilities as dean, Richard Malkin finds time to co-teach the lower division course, Biology 1A, in the fall semester.

“I like the introductory level,” Malkin said. “You can deal in broad strokes. Besides teaching facts, what you are really trying to do is to show students the excitement of the subject. We have 500 students in this year’s course. Some I will never reach, but if I’m able to convey that excitement to a number of students, then I feel that I am doing well.”

Division of Insect Biology Professor Vincent Resh, who received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1995, teaches 5 weeks of the 15-week introductory biology course. “Almost all Biology 1 students have aspirations to go on to medical school. Exposing them to ecology, evolution and botany may be the only experience with these subjects they will ever have. It will make them better informed citizens, and it’s extremely important that they be aware of these things,”he said.

Teaching is so important to Resh that in 1987, as chair of the Campus Committee on Teaching, he steered through the Academic Senate a campus-wide policy for the evaluation of teaching for advancement and promotion; it is now an integral part of faculty performance evaluations. “The perception, incorrect I might add, is that good teaching and good research are not compatible. But there was a feeling then that teaching was not considered in tenure and promotion cases; only research was considered. Establishing this policy put aside that notion for good,” he explained.

Professor and chair of the Division of Plant Biology, Lewis Feldman has been teaching at Cal for 25 years and received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1996. For the past 12 years, he and Resh have co-taught Biology 1B.

“I think undergraduate students are the best part about being at Cal. They are so original, creative, stimulating and a lot of fun. I get a terrific, wonderful kick when I interact with them,” he said.

To assure that interaction, Feldman visits all 25 lab sections during the course of his five-week botany section. “I go partly because I can help the teaching assistants, but also because it is the right thing to do. It gives me a chance to interact with these students on a one-to-one basis, which you can’t do in a big lecture hall.”

Standing before a roomful of 500––and sometimes as many as 1000––students can be daunting. “When you are teaching 500 students, you have to engage as many of the senses as possible, and make the material relevant to their lives. Sadly, very few high school teachers provide material on plants in their biology courses, so the students have had very little exposure and contact with plants. But many have gardened. I use the fruits, vegetables and flowers they are familiar with so that there is some association and connection,” Feldman explained.

Silver uses the same technique to demystify quantitative science. “I do a lot of chemistry in my classes. When students are intimidated by chemistry, I use the analogy that chemistry is just like cooking. I really enjoy watching the accomplishment they experience when they see that they can master it,” she said.

Mentoring Students at the Graduate Level

Teaching upper-division and graduate courses takes a slightly different approach, according to professor and chair of the Division of Forest Science Joe McBride, a 1991 Distinguished Teaching Award recipient. “My primary interest is in teaching, and I am especially interested in preparing graduate students for teaching careers at the university level,” he said.

“At the graduate level, there’s an expectation that students will do more of their learning through reading. We discuss the information to a greater extent than at the undergraduate level,” he continued.

“I encourage graduate students to delve into the primary literature, to think critically about journal papers and how they might approach problems differently,” added Silver, who teaches an upper-division/graduate course in tropical ecology as well as graduate seminars in ecosystem ecology.

“My role is more of a mentor than teacher at the graduate level,” noted Kaplan. “You inherently assume that graduate students have certain basics of subject matter that you don’t have to cover again, and that they can get up to speed faster. On the other hand, sometimes graduate students are more resistant to new information— they come thinking that they know a lot of things. I don’t do anything to put them down, but they’ll hang on to ideas as a security blanket.”

Resh also sees himself as a mentor to graduate and postgraduate students. “I have had 25 Ph.D’s in my lab. If we are successful, we turn them into professionals by teaching them how to excel in writing papers, how to present talks at meetings, and how to think through an experiment.”