There are those who speak of a call to teaching.

Many years ago when I was a graduate student, I received a message from a Sister McNamee. She was the administrator of Marywood Children and Family Services in Austin, Texas, which was among other things a home for unmarried expectant teenagers. She was looking for a high-school chemistry tutor to help some of their residents keep up with their schoolwork during their confinement. There were no laboratory facilities, not even a real classroom, just a conference room where I met with two young women three times a week. I really had very little teaching experience at this time, just one or two semesters of TA duties.

My graduate school work was in the development of catalytic antibodies in the laboratory of Dr. Brent Iverson at UT Austin. I was in his first research group, so I and my colleagues had the fun and experience of setting up a research lab from scratch. Dr. Iverson had developed an antibody that hydrolyzed the removal of a trityl protecting group from an ether linkage, and he remained interested in catalytic antibodies as a research tool. UT was having some kind of problem with their hybridoma facility at the time, which was frustrating our attempts to develop

One of the best classes I ever took was a graduate course in microbial genetics. The entire premise of this course was the critical dissection of research techniques. One or two papers would be selected by the instructor and handed out for discussion the next week.

Learning is not a passive accumulation of facts it must be functional, problemsolving, and interactive with the real world.

A teacher must be a coach, a general, an evangelist and an entertainer: A teacher must be a coach to infuse those who think they cant with the certain truth that they can. Some years ago I taught the course Introduction to Physical Science at Pulaski Technical College for several semesters. This is the science course for non-science majors, the people who are generally science-challenged. After spending their entire scholastic career avoiding math and science they come to the point where they must have this class to graduate I found this to be a surprisingly rewarding experience. I remember in particular a student whose amazed exclamation I can do this! after she correctly answered an involved calculation left me floating the rest of the day.

A teacher must be a general A teacher must be an evangelist to bring the true vision of chemistry beauty and relevance to a jaded and misguided public. Science and technology continue to swell in importance of understanding to the lay public, the people who utilize its fruits and vote on its applications, yet such understanding continues to lag, and even deteriorate. Such understanding cannot exist in a vacuum, however; associated issues of ethics, social mores and political goals are and shall be central to our culture. We must educate our scientists with social conscience and our lay public in scientific understanding. Not only am I a strong advocate of real-world infusion into the chemistry curriculum the bringing of current events into the classroom to focus and pique the students attentions but also the application of scientific methods outside of the classroom. To my mind the two most important skills that students can take from chemistry to any field is critical thinking and problem solving. A teacher must be an entertainer to counter the natural soporific environment of the classroom. Science today is FAR from a dry, abstract, boring subject, and it is near criminal for it to be perceived that way. One of the best ways to engage a class is a demonstration of the inundation of modern life in chemicals. A favorite assignment for class is to have them find a common product around their homes food, cleanser, hair product, et cetera and list three of the ingredients with uncommon names. Then the students take this list to the Merck Index in the library and identify those components and their properties. Depending upon the class level, I ask the students to give hypotheses with supporting facts for the purpose of these components in the products, and possible mechanisms of action. This hits the students where they live, causing them to think about what they eat, put on their bodies, and use around the house.