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Edward
M. Stricker’s neuroscience courses are perceived as “difficult,”
but they consistently receive praise from students.
 These
courses remain fresh and exciting for Stricker, too, even though
he has taught them for 30 years.
This
enthusiasm lies partly in the field, which regularly produces
new information that is universally relevant. Stricker, who
came to Pitt in 1971 as a faculty member in psychology,
regularly applies his research in his teaching. Although he is a
respected scientist, he considers himself foremost a teacher.
“I grew up wanting to be a teacher. I always thought that the
future of our country depends on good teachers, and that nothing
is more important than educating the next generation of
adults.” His unyieldingly high expectations engage students.
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"Before his class I was
a good student; after his class, I became a passionate
student."
Ryan L. Mori |
Value of Teaching
“As
department chairman I hire faculty who believe in the value of
teaching, and I make sure that I encourage them to maintain that
attitude,” Stricker says. “This department has many first-rate
teachers who are also first-rate scientists. That was my goal
when I became department chairman, and it was not hard to
achieve. Science and teaching are two sides of the same coin.
Part of what it means to be a scientist is to be an educator.
If you discover something that has not been known, you have an
obligation to tell others what you now know.”
The two classes that Stricker teaches are at opposite ends of
the spectrum in terms of size and structure. Introduction to
Neuroscience has 120 students and is chiefly taught in a
lecture format; 15 of these students meet once a week for an
additional more detailed honors class. An elective course in
homeostasis has about 30 students and is conducted more as a
group discussion than as a lecture. This course is in
Stricker’s area of research specialization, homeostasis, a
biological phenomenon whereby animals—including humans—maintain
a stable physiological environment.
“It’s easy to keep them interesting” comments Stricker,
referring to both courses. “This field is very dynamic. There
is much research going on, and what’s known changes from year to
year. The field keeps evolving so quickly that it challenges me
and makes it exciting for me to keep a course current. The
course gets better each year because the field gets better each
year.”
Key Questions
Another
factor that Stricker finds crucial to engaging students is
helping them to see the relevance of the material in their daily
lives. Stricker puts considerable effort into connecting this
material to basic questions that he asks in order to draw
students into the topic of each class. These questions are
carefully formed in order to connect research with common
experiences: How can you see in color? Why is the sky blue?
Why do you get hungry? Why do you get thirsty?
“What we talk about is quite relevant to
people’s lives. I have a very receptive audience,” Stricker
says. “It’s easy to teach a course that provides information in
which students are interested. It’s also fun to teach such a
course.”
Even in class, Stricker encourages students
to interrupt the lecture to ask questions “that indicate they’re
trying to figure things out, that advance the lecture by showing
they’re thinking ahead. The number of questions depends on the
particular lecture and how I introduce it. If I’m doing a good
job, students interrupt more often.” This ties in with the
extensive preparation each class demands of him: “First I worry
about the content, what I want to say. Then I worry about how
to present it so that it’s interesting. The keys to the lecture
are the questions that I will ask students to get them
interested.” Sometimes there is no answer to a question; he
then encourages students to do some research to find an answer.
In fact, he regularly advises undergraduate students to work in
any of the many research laboratories on campus.
The smaller elective class allows for
extensive dialogue: “We all ask many more questions here, and
students make presentations. This class is very
interactive—students get to know each other, they get to know
me, and they get to know the subject matter very well. Students
really want to be in class, I think, and I think they are
unhappy if they have to miss a class.”
Mastering the process
of understanding knowledge is more important to Stricker than
the rote memorization of facts. He strives to teach
undergraduates how to form questions that they can then evaluate
in order to answer: How does all of this work? How is all of
it integrated? How do you know when you have enough information
to really know something?
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