Professor wins national award

At a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Tuesday, Craig Nelson, professor of biology and public and environmental affairs, was honored as "U.S. Professor of the Year" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.\n"To say I'm delighted would be a gross understatement," Nelson said. "I am really grateful for the support IU has given me over the years to foster better teaching. The students have been incredibly helpful in letting me understand how to do things better."\nNelson was chosen out of a pool of 500 nominees for the award, which originated in 1981. It "salutes the most outstanding undergraduate instructors in the country -- those who excel as teachers and influence the lives and careers of their students," according to a statement by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.\nThe Council supervises the early stages of the selection process and The Carnegie Foundation chooses the four winners from the finalists designated by CASE. Nelson won in the category of research and doctoral universities.The other categories are community colleges, bachelor's degree colleges and master's degree colleges and universities.\nMoya Andrews, vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of the faculties, said the award is the only one for U.S. professors in the country that recognizes dedication to teaching and commitment to developing innovative methods of instruction.\n"I think it's a wonderful example of how we are very serious about undergraduate teaching on this campus," Andrews said. "For our nominee to win an award for professor of the year for the rest of the U.S. demonstrates we have a high commitment to undergraduate teaching and learning."\nNelson was an obvious choice for IU's nominee for the award, Andrews said. \n"I chose Nelson because he was obviously a leader in the scholarship of teaching and learning," she said. "In his courses he does a lot of active learning; he might have a course of 100 students but he has them all engaged in activity rather than sitting and listening to him. He was clearly a leader on campus and someone who students have praised year after year for his teaching."\nStudents, faculty and advisors wrote statements about Nelson's commitment to teaching as part of the nomination process. Nelson also had to write a statement about his philosophy and evolution as a teacher.\n"You have to submit a lot of evidence," Andrews said. "You have to get the person's resume, letters of support from people from all over the country who know their work and teaching evaluations by colleagues."\nNelson said many of his teaching methods have grown out of student suggestions. About a third of the way into his courses, Nelson asks students to tell him what part of the class they liked best and what they wish was different about the class.\n"Some things they've had to tell me three or four years in a row, but eventually I get it, or at least part of it," he said. "The suggestions range from trivial things like making sure different types of handouts are on different colors of paper to things like learning how to use discussion in big classes and making themes clearer and more important."\nNelson said critical thinking is a major theme he likes to get across in his teaching and in the work he has done in the area of teaching. Nelson said critical thinking is a survival issue, in that it is something employers look for when hiring new people and something that helps people do their jobs better.\nNelson has written chapters in various teaching books and traveled all over the U.S. and world to present at teaching conferences.\n"The heart of critical thinking is complexity, uncertainty and consequences," he said. "These are all part of our lives, from our personal lives to being a citizen of the Earth."\nAt the Tuesday awards ceremony, Nelson was introduced by one of the students who wrote about his teaching during the nomination process. Ian Parker-Renga, a senior, met Nelson when he took the professor's class on evolution and was instructed by Nelson as part of the Freshman Interest Group program.\n"Throughout the semester last year I would go talk to him," Parker-Renga said. "We formed a relationship not really based on biology but based in pursuit of educational studies."\nParker-Renga, who calls Nelson 'Doc,' said he was honored to pay tribute to Nelson.\n"It was such a great opportunity to present to the country, if not just to IU, what both a model professor and a model person he is," he said. "Doc has a great smile; he smiles a lot. You'd never know he deals with some serious issues. Education is a rather serious issue, but Doc has learned to smile about it and enjoy it"