Dr. Todd Deal
Professor of Chemistry

Background
To give you a sense of my background, let me take you back to 1982. That was a year of seminal events for Georgia Southern College. During that year, Georgia Southern’s Bell Honors Program enrolled its first class of eager young scholars and the “brand new” Eagle football team played its first season. Strangely, each of those seemingly unrelated events had a tremendous impact on my life and on my career.

I was fortunate to be a member of that initial class of the Bell Honors program. Prior to the arrival of that first group of students, a committee of faculty led by Professor Hew Joiner had crafted a program designed to challenge honors students with a set of team-taught, interdisciplinary courses that replaced the core curriculum of the Bell Honors students. Over the next 3+ years, I was pushed harder than I ever thought possible in a classroom by the likes of John Humma, Judy Schomber, David Stone, Arthur Woodrum, Lane Van Tassel and Fred Richter – professors who were recognized then, as they will ever be, as a cadre of Georgia Southern’s best. They challenged, inspired, and motivated me to explore ideas, to think beyond my world, to look to the wisdom of the ages – to learn and to love learning. Through the efforts of those dedicated teachers, I left Georgia Southern changed – largely for the better – and I knew it. I realized that I had been given a gift, and I wanted to continue that legacy and give to other students.

From graduate school in the chemistry program at The Ohio State University, I watched the changes occurring at my alma mater. The small college that had roughly 6000 students when I walked the campus was propelled into a period of explosive growth. Football, the detonator that ignited that explosion, brought name recognition and a flood of students to Georgia Southern, which by the time I’d finished my Ph.D. in 1990, had grown to more than 12,000 students. Those new faces brought an increased demand for classes, which led to a need for new faculty, which in 1992 brought the opportunity I’d hoped for – to come home and to help build a new Georgia Southern.

And now, everyday I have the opportunity to give back, to challenge students as I was challenged, and, hopefully, to make an impact in their lives, not only in my classroom and laboratory, but also in my role as an academic advisor and as faculty advisor to the Baptist Collegiate Ministries and to the Association of Pre-Health Professionals. I even get to give back to the football program by serving as the public address voice on Saturdays at Paulson!

Teaching Philosophy & Strategy

My philosophy of teaching is built upon a central theme that I present to my students on the first day of class each semester. With my students, I frame this as our “teaching/learning bargain.” The “bargain” is an integral part of the syllabus and course materials for each of my courses and comes from a quote of unknown origin, “Telling is not teaching, and listening is not learning.” Within this simple, and perhaps trite, quote lies what I believe to be the key to effective educational exchange between teacher and student.

The first clause of the quote, “Telling is not teaching,” succinctly summarizes my responsibilities to my students – to do more than simply deliver information. Implicit in this clause is the fundamental idea that teaching is a multifaceted activity. I wholeheartedly embrace the idea that good teaching engages both student and teacher in the teaching and learning process. To this end, I am constantly experimenting with new teaching techniques and strategies in my classroom and in my instructional and research laboratories. In my 17th year of “formal” teaching, I continue to tweak, change, experiment with, and sometimes even overhaul a class each time I teach it. Maybe someday I’ll figure it out and get it all just right!

Over the years, my efforts to improve my teaching have included experimentation with a variety of methodologies including peer instruction (as per Eric Mazur’s efforts at Harvard), cooperative learning (in collaboration with Melanie Cooper at Clemson), need-to-know-based strategies (as per the American Chemical Society’s Chemistry in Context), guided inquiry instruction (drawn from the National Science Foundation-funded POGIL project), and various other active learning/student-centered strategies. My teaching is a dynamic mosaic consisting of pieces of each of these techniques highlighted with a generous sprinkling of the use of technology in the classroom (I’ve just begun a foray into supplemental instruction through podcasting) and discovery-based experiences in the laboratory.

The second clause of the “teaching/learning bargain” quote, “listening is not learning," outlines both my expectations of my students and their role in our “bargain” – to do more than simply receive information. An integral part of any effective learning experience is the motivation on the part of the learner to learn. Without this motivation, the teaching/learning process breaks down. In an ideal situation, the learner is responsible for developing and maintaining this motivation. The reality of the educational endeavor is that an effective teacher must be a good motivator. So, while I do expect my students to become actively engaged in the learning process, I facilitate their involvement by encouraging and motivating them to learn.

The strategies that I employ in this element of my teaching are as diverse as the students that I teach. Some students are motivated to become involved in the learning process simply by being assigned a set of homework problems to complete. Others are motivated by weekly opportunities to display their knowledge on quizzes. While not particularly challenging to motivate, such students are a delight for me as a teacher because they challenge my abilities to push them to a higher level of thought and reasoning.

The Vitamin Project

A large percentage of my students, especially the non-science majors, are not motivated by the aforementioned techniques. On the contrary, they are often intimidated and/or discouraged by homework problem sets and quizzes. I delight in these students as well because they inspire me to discover what motivates them to learn (and hopefully enjoy) chemistry. I have found that some of these students appreciate learning about things that directly affect their lives; therefore, I attempt to make the subject matter relevant to them by introducing concepts in the context of “real world” issues – chemical chirality as it pertains to the physiological activity of certain drugs or the chemistry behind the ozone layer. For others, I have found that making them a part of the teaching team (having them do classroom presentations or design instructional websites – see the recent Vitamin Project) is the key to motivating them to engage in the learning process. So, while the techniques vary, the purpose is the same – to encourage students to actively engage in the learning process, to cast off the passive, ineffective mode of “listening only” learning, and to take responsibility for their own education. This part of teaching, I believe, is where we, as teachers, exert the greatest influence in the development of lifelong learners.

One of my favorite teaching venues, and perhaps the truest test of the "teaching/learning" bargain, is my research lab. In the lab, my students and I have the advantages of a one-on-one teaching/learning situation and an open-ended problem to pursue. In this setting, I typically pose the problem, provide some general directions/guidelines, and step back and watch them begin the search for a solution. At this point, most beginning research students struggle because they are unsure of their knowledge and abilities. I often allow them to flounder for a while, but not to the point of total discouragement. The secret to effective teaching in the research lab is knowing when to step in and provide guidance. Then, as they begin to uncover pieces of the puzzle on their own, I become involved as an “expert learner,” calling on all of my teaching techniques and abilities to facilitate their discoveries, but allowing them to guide the way – to teach me! In this role reversal-type experience, both teacher and student come to truly appreciate the part that the other plays in the teaching/learning process.

Over the course of my career, the "teaching/learning bargain" has proven a dependable philosophy and a successful strategy in my teaching. The majority of my students respond positively to the challenge it presents, and they enjoy the interactive environment that it compels me to create in the classroom and laboratory. However, I am convinced that the strategy works well because it is one of the ways that I let my students know that I care about them - as people and as learners. I have long had a heart for teaching and for students, and the "bargain" is just one of the ways that I express my concern for their learning. For in the end, the heart of effective teaching is a passion to communicate coupled with a genuine care and concern for students.