Teaching Philosophy of Dr. Richard B.

Schultz Department of Geography and Geosciences Elmhurst College I feel very fortunate to be part of the faculty at Elmhurst College because one of my greatest joys in life is teaching. I left a very prosperous private consulting job behind to enter a career in academia just because of my love for the students in the classroom. My students are predominately from all major and minor areas of study and include undergraduate students preparing to enter the workforce in one occupation or another. Even if they are not specifically preparing to work in fields such as education or psychology, many will be in human service professions and most will become parents. I view teaching as a process of exposing students to new concepts and principles that have the potential of changing their attitudes and perspectives, and, both personally and professionally, increasing their ability to live more effective, meaningful and satisfying lives. In the classroom, I challenge them to think about controversial, yet important topics such as global climate change, how the media portrays science and scientific principles, and even the future of technology. Students learn by experiencing cognitive dissonance, struggling with a difficult task, being challenged and taking risks, and getting hands-on, real-life experiences with guidance and feedback. Therefore, there are times when allowing students to struggle is necessary and even prosperous to their depth of learning. Not all students see it that way, of course. However, because they cannot experience all of the aforementioned in the classroom, every one of my students in all of my classes is required to do either a project or a presentation outside of class through which they apply the principles that are being learned. This widens the boundaries of the classroom and makes learning more realistic and more exciting. Often students are reluctant at first to take on such a timeconsuming task outside of regular class hours. However, many students, because of these projects, eventually sign up for additional credit hours or volunteer through holidays, breaks and/or after the semester grades have been assigned because they are experiencing the true rewards of learning and using what has been learned to better the world and make a difference. It is my philosophy that students need to actively participate in the process of learning-they must think, read, write, talk and even argue about the concepts they are learning about and applying. For this reason, my students are often assigned to read and summarize journal articles (some technical, others mainstream), write summaries about guest lectures and videos, participate in classroom activities where they discuss and debate with other students, write summaries and evaluations critiquing their own and other students projects, and present and listen to oral presentations of other students in the class. As I observe this process of learning, I get a thrill from seeing growth in many students' ability and willingness to express themselves through writing and

speaking. I spend a lot of time correcting grammar and reinforcing good critical thinking. Students often see this as being picky or too critical. However, I see it as a learning experience for them and a necessary part of their liberal arts education. Each semester, I see the transition from the students' initial lack of interest to the next stage of "okay, I have to learn it, so what will be on the test" to "this doesn't make sense" to "I disagree with your point of view" to "how does this apply to my life" and finally some experience the "what can I do about this situation" or how can I make a difference stage. This, to me, represents a deep learning and a progression that exemplifies lifelong learning. I get excited about discussing the latest research and sharing my professional and personal experiences that have changed my points of view. It brings such great pleasure to me when students have thoughtful questions, indicating that they understand a concept and are attempting to apply it in a meaningful way. I believe that students are motivated by others involvement and a teacher's love of the subject matter being taught, by the teacher's faith in the students' competence and desire to learn, by the teacher's excitement, pride, and passion in the students' learning, and by the teacher's modeling of the principles taught in the way the teacher lives his or her life. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. -William Arthur WardMy goal as an educator is to be a great teacher and to inspire my students. Teaching at a college or university is a challenge with great rewards. My students are, without exception, intelligent and motivated people with open minds; it is up to me to build on their multiple intelligences, kindle their curiosity about learning and utilize their motivation. One of the first things I tell my students is that, that if they are majoring in a particular subject for the monetary gains in the future, they are wasting their time. Money can be lost, but an education is with us for a lifetime. I go on to tell them to major or study something you enjoy and have a passion for. If you have that passion, you will become good at whatever it is and are very likely to gain meaningful employment. Someone will most certainly pay you well to do whatever it is you enjoy doing, no matter what that skill or interest be, because you do it well and have a passion for it. Science is a very creative process followed by critical evaluation, which is how I teach my students to think. I strongly encourage questions and I respond by asking questions in turn, guiding them to the answer. Once we get to the answer, they not only understand it and remember it, but they will also have a blueprint on how to create answers and hypotheses on their own and how to then critically question these answers or theories.

I believe in an educational culture that is associated with activity, ethics, and active learning. I see the professors role as enabling students to develop their maximum human potential, to explore possibilities and seek opportunities for growth and development in their lives while doing it in an ethical manner. I want to be a mentor to my students. I encourage them to set goals, I guide them to develop and find their optimal learning style, and I assist them with exam anxiety and learning/recall skills. My greatest reward is when a student comes to me and shares his/her excitement about achieving a goal he/she didnt even dream of before, or shares a new understanding of his/her learning style or a newfound calmness in writing exams. Most of my rewards come after the class is over when I get to interact with the newly enlightened students! I do challenge my students and I also go out of my way to assist them in meeting and even exceeding that challenge. I encourage active participation by the students, which sometimes leads us to explore a concept in depth those I consider to be the best and most fruitful discussions. Tell me and I will forget, Show me and I will remember, Engage me and I will understand. - Lakota Sioux SayingI have learned that students possess different learning styles. To be a great teacher I have made it a priority to study how people learn which enhances my ability to cater to all learning styles. I consistently take courses to enhance my teaching, lecturing and presentation skills and I also take advantage of the many excellent teachers at Elmhurst College to get new ideas or to fine tune new teaching methods. I believe myself to be an innovative instructor. I use PowerPoint presentations to facilitate my lectures and make the content handouts available via the internet prior to the lecture. This frees the students to focus on the lecture making it easier for them to grasp concepts and see correlations. I have heard arguments that providing lecture notes will lead to a decrease in attendance. I can only attest to my own experience that, on the contrary, students interpret posting lecture notes online as a sign of caring for their learning and attendance at my classes is always high. I also provide web-based support in terms of a supplementary BlackBoard course management site. Indeed, I have been employed as a consultant for the development of a companion website for Prentice Hall Publishers to supplement their meteorology textbook and my lecture notes. As an innovative instructor, I am the first in the Department of Geography and Geosciences at Elmhurst College to teach an entirely online course. It is licensed through the American Meteorological Society and has seen a waiting list for enrollment the past four (4) times it has been offered. The AMS has designated me as a peer advisor/mentor to other instructors teaching in the prestigious AMS Online Weather Studies Program.

The feedback from my students will always be the measure for the effectiveness and acceptance of new teaching and learning tools and methods, which I take very seriously. I appreciate the opportunities the College offers me as a professor, the flexibility of my Department Chair to try out new innovations in teaching, and most of all I appreciate my students for the learning opportunities they provide for me! What I want my Students to Learn and Why After developing the knowledge and skills that are the foundation of the geosciences, I want my students to progress towards developing an ethical awareness and responsibility. Science does not merely reflect life and thus afford a window onto the culture of the past and present; it also presents a call to establish an ethical stance in the world. Science provides students not only an understanding of various ethical issues of the past and present but also a responsibility to the other. In the case of science, this call to ethical relation occurs in the encounter with research which demands that students to be open to subjective refashioningthat is, students must suspend their habits and beliefs and be willing to allow scientific research to be open, objective, and ethical, such that fresh new discoveries may occur. Significantly, subjective refashioning, here explained in the context of science, is the basis of all ethical relations and thus what occurs in my classes transcends science and can impact the daily lives of students. I hope that students leave my classes not only with the knowledge and skills that will allow them to be successful in their vocational lives, but also with the attitudes and receptiveness that will allow them to be fulfilled in their personal lives. Teaching Strategies Because I firmly believe that students learn best when instructors have high expectations of them, I encourage my students to discover, to reachand even to stretch beyondtheir potential. However, it is not sufficient for an instructor to hold high expectations of students for them to learn; rather, instructors must also provide the necessary scaffolding for students to reach these expectations. These two items, high expectations and instructor willingness to assist, are primary themes that run throughout my student evaluations. While all my classes center on active learning techniques, where students are directly involved in the process of developing their learning and knowledge catering to the various learning styles, I carefully employ these techniques in order to build the necessary scaffolding so that the three levels of learning can occur in my classes. During a semester, I generally progress from a lecture/discussion format to a class with the format of independent analysis and discovery, along the following lines: begin with discussion-based lectures to provide historical contexts and background and to situate the practical nature of the science. These
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lectures generally occur through the facilitation of PowerPoint; on my PowerPoint slides; I provide a .pdf file of the material (lacking some detail and animated graphics) so that students are involved in classroom discussion rather than merely copying information off the Internet. During these discussions, students are asked to consider the historical and the cultural significance of the events described in order to engage the students and begin the process of critical thinking.
I then move to critical analysis of important concepts in the geosciences. I generally announce a key topic that guides our analysis and then assign interactive online lab assignments that are central to the theme or purpose of the work. During the class discussion, the students will be guided to making connections and building analysis that leads towards an understanding of the theme of the work. Students work together in groups to benefit from anothers viewpoint, perspective, and learning style.

I move towards analysis that occurs in small groups and independently. I will break the class into 4 or 5 groups based on their Learning Styles Inventory results and provide each group with a specific task or tasks; the analysis of the tasks at hand builds so that when the groups present their material, the students have guided the discussion towards the theme of the work. The final stage is to have more open ended discussions where students are responsible for selecting the key topic and the concepts for analysis. The content matter and the critical and creative thinking skills that are developed in class are reinforced through mini-essays (WAC-based including muddiest point), concept quizzes (a form of Classroom Assessment Techniques or CATs made famous by Cross and DAngelo), critical thinking guides, and exams. Students thus progress from an instructor-led model of learning to an independent model where they are responsible for developing their own analysis and communicating that analysis. I believe that one of the keys to successful teaching is flexibility on the part of the instructor. The instructor must be able to read the students during a class session, to be flexible enough to alter class plans, and to follow student ideas. Such a process is often discomforting because the instructor cannot know where the ideas will lead and must carefully guide this processwithout interrupting it so that it is productive. Teaching Innovations As my student evaluations demonstrate, students in my classes learn in ways and at levels that they did not know possible. I aim to aid them in realizingand even in stretchingtheir potential. Several aspects of my teaching are responsible for this learning:

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of Technology: I employ technology in my classes in order to increase student learning and to prepare students for their future using technology. I regularly use PowerPoint to facilitate lectures and the BlackBoard course management system for posting and online threaded discussions.
Teaching that impacts my Research and Service: my teaching is not only strengthened by my scholarship of teaching research, but it also generally leads to fresh ideas for my teaching. My teaching is very often linked to my service activities in that I present material in community forums that derives from what I do in class.

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Level of Expectations and Willingness to Help Students: while my courses are challenging with a high level of expectation, I am always open to helping students reach these challenges. I firmly believe that students will come to love learning, and ultimately become lifelong learners as a result, gaining the ability to be successful learners in the process.

High

Recently, as I progress as an educator, I have learned that keeping current with students ways of thinking and popular culture is crucial. I have recently employed the use of online videos such as Google Videos and YouTube as a means of communicating and relating to students. This seems to relax students, ease their apprehensions and makes for a more comfortable learning environment for the students.

Teaching and education is an ever-evolving process. As I constantly tweak and tinker with my course content, presentation style and mode of discussion, I welcome new ideas and innovations that help make concepts more understandable to my students. I am thankful that Elmhurst College has provided me the academic freedom to be able to do this.