Chemistry, Food Science & Technology earn teaching awards

Recipients of the 2000 Departmental Teaching Excellence Awards are the departments of Chemistry and Food Science and Technology. The Office of Academic Affairs and the Alumni Association co-sponsor the awards, honoring outstanding performance in teaching by two academic departments each year. The awards recognize the central role that undergraduate, graduate and professional teaching plays in the University's mission, and acknowledge the collective effort that determines the quality of individual students' education. Winning departments receive $25,000 in annual rate from the Office of Academic Affairs and a one-time award of $1,500 from the Alumni Association.

In addition, three departments received an honorable mention in the competitive program: East Asian Languages and Literatures, French and Italian, and Linguistics. Each will receive a one-time award of $2,000 from the Office of Academic Affairs.

"All of these departments are honorable, in my book, for their obvious commitment to excellence in teaching," said Martha Garland, vice provost and dean for undergraduate studies. "The competition for these awards is stiff, which is really a blessing -- we have so many departments working incredibly hard on behalf of the students. It's such a pleasure to be able to reward them through this program."

Food Science & Technology

When the food industry talks about what it needs from its employees, Ohio State's Department of Food Science and Technology listens. And then it often adjusts its curriculum accordingly, contributing to the nearly 100 percent employability of OSU food science and technology graduates.

But what's even more impressive is that when Ohio State food science and technology students talk, industry listens -- and learns. In a relatively new course, industry representatives are invited to bring their toughest dilemmas to a Technical Problem-Solving course in which teams of students work with faculty and industry to solve product development problems.

"The students are not told these problems are impossible,"said Ken Lee, chair of the department. Recent industry partners seeking help from OSU students to improve their products included Pillsbury, Cheryl's Cookies and McDonald's.

Lee can point to several times when the department has altered its curriculum to meet the latest industry standards as well as the results of student feedback. In fact, curriculum is consistently open for debate with the department's curriculum committee -- its most active group.

Two industry advisory boards meet three times annually with department leaders, and students complete biannual surveys on the quality of departmental courses. Recent student requests that have been heeded include a course on flavor chemistry and a practical product development course.

The department recognizes the enviable position of its students upon graduation, and does all it can to maintain the demand for Ohio State food science and technology alumni.

"There is no graduate of food science who cannot find a job,"Lee said. Even so, most entry-level workers are expected to need some on-the-job training. Not so with OSU food science graduates, who are characterized by employers as "plug-and-play,"meaning they are ready to work without orientation.

And they're working in a field that truly is key to improving the human condition -- which is core to the University's values and mission, Lee notes. "We're everything from the farm gate to the dinner plate,"he said. And he's convinced that Ohio State graduates will have a role in making food more nutritious and safer, saying he expects to see the statistic of 5,000 people dying annually of food-borne illnesses cut by a factor of 10 in his lifetime.

In their pursuit of safer and better foods, students are working with a highly decorated group of faculty in a relatively small department for Ohio State: 14 professors total. Many have earned the University's Distinguished Scholar Award and the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, and all have received a variety of external awards commending their work.

In the past 10 years, candidates for faculty positions have undergone a rigorous trial run in the classroom -- a rite of passage that many candidates have said is a requirement unique to the department. Once they're hired, junior faculty are consistently reviewed by a Peer Review of Teaching Committee assigned specifically to one assistant professor. Senior faculty, too, continue to update and enhance their own teaching skills and materials.

"That's about a culture of excellence,"Lee said. "I'm fortunate, and I guess Ohio State is fortunate, that we don't have monodimensional faculty. You can't say you're going to be excellent in teaching and not also be excellent in research and service. This college (the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences) really does have a tradition and cultural expectation that gives students the top priority. They find this a compelling place to learn."

The student-faculty interaction is extensive in the department, which Lee attributes in part to the physical attributes of being separated from the main campus by the Olentangy River. "You have a full-service research and land-grant university, yet when students come to the college, they get a small college atmosphere, and lots of one-on-one teaching and advising. They feel like they're members of a team,"Lee said.

Faculty interaction branches out into student events, including judging teams, national product development contests, and the Food Science College Bowl team. Students who participate in such activities are supported by scholarships, employment, reimbursement and travel support. The student support for College Bowl participation has paid off: Ohio State's team placed first in the national contest in 1998.

Support also is extended to graduate students thanks to the department's top placement in a national competition among doctoral teaching programs for Ph.D. stipends awarded by the National Needs Fellows program for food science. The department received $162,000 in federal support when OSU ranked first among 40 applying programs.

Lee said the department will use its teaching excellence award earnings to invest in and foster activities that give students extraordinary learning experiences, including pursuing the most state-of-the-art technology available for its new $17 million building under construction. The department plans to occupy the building in December.

Lee said the department has been fortunate to raise $3 million recently for endowment support from alumni who clearly still feel affection for the faculty and the student-centered environment. "That's really the kind of support we see at Ohio State when students really do appreciate what they had here,"he said.

Bruce Bursten, chair of the Department of Chemistry, one of the winners of the 2000 Departmental Teaching Excellence Awards.

Chemistry

Somewhere in Powell, a special-edition Porsche Speedster displays an Ohio State alumni vanity license plate: "CHEM."At Alma College in Michigan, a professor who enrolled at Ohio State as an English major, took one chemistry class for fun and then became a double-major, is now seven years into her career as a chemistry professor.

The Porsche owner, now the owner of a local start-up company in adhesives chemistry, remains proud of his degree and grateful to the faculty who taught him to learn his chemistry subjects rather than memorize them. And the Alma professor credits several Ohio State chemistry faculty with preparing her for the rigors of graduate study at the University of Wisconsin. She went directly from a B.A. program at Ohio State to a Ph.D. program at a highly ranked school, with plenty of encouragement and even a private spectroscopy tutorial from OSU faculty and graduate students.

Both of those students graduated in the early 1980s, but Chemistry Chair Bruce Bursten would insist that the departmental atmosphere that places teaching on a pedestal hasn't changed since those students' lives were so affected by chemistry at Ohio State. If anything, with many recent hires of junior faculty resulting from an Early Retirement Incentive, faculty commitment to teaching may have become even more emphasized.

Even as he marvels at the department's award, Bursten acknowledges the fact that chemistry and good teaching don't always go hand in hand in people's minds -- especially the minds of the thousands of nonmajors who take chemistry every quarter, many of whom initially fear or dread the class but finish the term with positive remarks on their instructor evaluations.

"How can a department strong in research -- and we think we're one of the strongest research departments at Ohio State -- plus a department considered so tough be considered a good teaching department?"Bursten said. But he's armed with plenty of answers -- and, he adds, he thinks chemistry is a great teaching department.

First, consider the faculty, one of the highest-achieving groups of professors on campus. The list of award-winners and eminent scholars is long, and includes the likes of Bursten, Distinguished University Professor, Distinguished Scholar Award winner and two-time recipient of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, as chair; Professors Malcolm Chisholm and Patrick Hatcher, recent additions resulting from funds made available when the department received a 1999 Selective Investment award from the University; and a group of highly promising junior faculty, including seven recent recipients of the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development award -- the largest number of those awards in any single department at any university nationally.

Bursten has crunched some numbers of award-winners, and reports that of the 36 College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences faculty who have received the Distinguished Scholar Award and the 30 college recipients of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, 16 and 12 of those recipients, or 44 percent and 40 percent, respectively, were chemistry professors.

Plus, nearly all chemistry faculty -- from the most junior to the most senior -- participate in teaching the 100- and 200-level courses.

"There's a good departmental culture to allow people to be excellent teachers and want to be good teachers, even though our main criteria for hiring are research and scholarship,"Bursten said. "We make a big deal about the senior people we hire from other universities, who are among the most distinguished researchers and teachers in the world. But we also grow our own,"he said, noting his own 20-year tenure at Ohio State and previous Chair Matthew Platz's even longer OSU career.

"We start with faculty who are intrinsically interested in teaching. They do a good job, and are assisted by a superb support staff and a superb training program for graduate teaching associates and undergraduate student instructional aides,"Bursten said. "And you can't leave out the relationship between research and teaching. A big part of the undergraduate experience here is that a lot of students receive undergraduate research experience. Plus, we have faculty at the cutting edge of chemical research exposing our students to the best new stuff going on."

Other chemistry highlights cited by the department and supporters for the award nomination include the department's stellar laboratory facilities; a systematic program of evaluation and mentoring of new faculty; a well-stocked and staffed Learning Resource Center; technological innovations in teaching that include development of a Web site visited and revered by students, scholars and teachers nationwide; and the ability to prove chemistry's applicability to many walks of life.

That last item may sound familiar to college students around the world who question the usefulness of their courses, but one recent computer science major believes it now: In a recent letter to a faculty member, he wrote, "I have to know all kinds of chemistry to do my job, as well as some mechanical engineering, and every once in awhile computer science. Reminds me of the feeling I used to get when I realized my mom was rightÉ."

The department will use its award winnings to directly support teaching. The cash award will help fund a program of teaching chemistry to high school chemistry teachers, and the department is considering using the annual rate to support the hiring of a faculty specialist in chemical education.

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