When: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 | 2:00pm
Where: University Library, Lilly Auditorium
As part of IUPUI’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, the IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning, along with the Preparing Future Faculty program and the IUPUI/Indiana University Midwest Crossroad Alliance for Graduate Education to the Professoriate (AGEP), a National Science Foundation supported initiative welcomes Dr. Brian P. Coppola, nationally recognized educator, author, and lecturer.
There will be an open house and reception in the Center for Teaching and Learning (UL 1125) immediately following Dr. Coppola's presentation.
PRESENTATION TITLE
“Say, Professor, let me whitewash a little…”
Advances in understanding teaching and learning point to what needs to be done, but do not always address a critical reality: how can complex teaching and education research actually get done by mainstream faculty members whose primary focus is disciplinary research? Our answer is drawn from the lesson that the science faculty borrowed from Tom Sawyer 60 years ago: we educate new scholars by collaborating with them, as students, getting them to work on our big ideas. Our simple question is whether what is true for big research ideas can apply to big teaching ideas, by working with the students who intend to become faculty members – and intentionally preparing them for both research and education. Broadening the preparation of future faculty, as it turns out, is a critically neglected underpinning of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Brian P. Coppola is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as the department’s Associate Chair. Dr. Coppola received his B.S. degree in 1978 from the University of New Hampshire and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984. Moving to Ann Arbor in 1986, he joined an active group of faculty in the design and implementation of a revised undergraduate chemistry curriculum. His 1996-7 tenure review established a new policy within the College of Literature, Science and Arts at the University of Michigan, recognizing discipline-centered teaching and learning as an area that can be represented within the LSA departments. He was promoted to Full Professor of Chemistry in 2001-2. His recent publications range from mechanistic organic chemistry research in 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reactions to educational philosophy, practice and assessment.
Professor Coppola also co-directs the IDEA Institute (Instructional Development and Educational Assessment), a collaboration between the College of Literature, Science and the Arts and the School of Education. At the post-secondary level, IDEA activities broaden the scholarly development for all students (undergraduate to post-doctoral) who are interested in academic careers. These students have the opportunity to collaborate on teaching projects with the faculty members in the same way that they pursue their research projects. IDEA also targets precollege teaching and learning with the same challenge: how can teachers bring their own ideas forward by collaborating with university students and faculty members.
In 1994, Dr, Coppola received the 4th campus-wide "Golden Apple Award" for outstanding teaching, a recognition organized and administered solely by undergraduate students. In 1996, he was awarded a United States Department of Energy, Undergraduate Computational Science Education Award. In 1998, Dr. Coppola was selected as part of the first group of Carnegie Scholars affiliated with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's CASTL program (Carnegie Academy on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning). In 1999, Dr. Coppola received the Amoco Foundation Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching; and in 2002 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2003, he received the Kendall-Hunt Outstanding Undergraduate Science Teacher Award from the Society for College Science Teachers. In 2004 he was named the State of Michigan Professor of the Year in the CASE/Carnegie US Professor of the Year program; in 2006, he received the American Chemical Society’s James Flack Norris Award for work that has impacted the field of chemistry education.
He is a member of the editorial boards of The Chemical Educator, The International Journal of Science Education, The Journal for Research in Science Teaching, and the Journal of Science Education and Technology. He is the editor in chief of The Hexagon, the quarterly publication of Alpha Chi Sigma, the professional chemistry fraternity.
For more information, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at 317-274-1300.
