Texas A&M ecosystem science and management professor earns recognition
Teaching strategy incorporates research process learning
Writer: Kay Ledbetter, 806-677-5608, [email protected]
Contact: Dr. Ben Wu, 979-845-7334, [email protected]
COLLEGE STATION – Dr. Ben Wu believes in taking his research to the classroom to make sure his students understand the science. But more important, he said, is teaching them how to apply the “process” of science to their everyday lives.
Wu’s teaching and research accomplishments recently earned him the 2015 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award.
Wu, a professor in the department of ecosystem science and management at Texas A&M University, joined the university in 1995. He also has a joint appointment with Texas A&M AgriLife Research.
According to the award information, to be eligible for the SEC Faculty Achievement Award, a professor must be a teacher or scholar at an SEC university; have achieved the rank of full professor; have a record of extraordinary teaching; and have a record of scholarship that is recognized nationally and/or internationally.
But Wu will be the first to say he wasn’t always award-winning material as a teacher. In fact, he said, his first round of student evaluations came with more than a few “boring” and “zzzzzzzz” comments.
In the past 20 years, he said, he has learned as much from his students as he has taught them. And that has been rewarding.
Wu’s research focuses on landscape ecology and ecology education. He teaches an undergraduate course, “Fundamentals of Ecology,” with about 450 students split between two classes each fall semester.
He also teaches a graduate course, “Landscape Analysis and Modeling,” that generally attracts between 15-20 students. He said he tries to limit the number to less than 15 to make sure he is able to give each student attention, but because of its popularity, he often has more.
Wu said many undergraduate students do not have a good understanding of what science is. They also may not have good critical thinking, communication and collaborative learning skills, and so his process of teaching is designed to develop those.
“One problem is we as teachers and researchers often don’t really understand where our students are. We are experts and we don’t realize what approach we need to take with the novices who are not our equals.”
Wu participated in a week-long Wakonse Conference on College Teaching early in his career with other educators to explore how to be a better teacher, after student evaluations indicated “he really knows his stuff” and “he really cares and is trying hard,” but said he needed to learn teaching techniques.
“I was inspired by the Wakonse experience and, when I came back, I told my mentor at the Center for Teaching Excellence that I wanted to become one of the best teachers on campus someday. I started experimenting with different teaching approaches. It’s hard with large classes. Some things worked. Some failed.”
Wu’s research expertise is with the interaction between spatial patterns and ecological processes. This includes the study of how many different ecosystems are present in an area, how widespread they are and how they are arranged next to one another. This influences ecological processes, such as how animals move, how fire will travel or how diseases spread.
But he has another facet of research – teaching. He started collecting data about his teaching; taking a scholarly approach to research teaching to determine what works well and what does not.
“You have to try to improve your approach, just as if you were doing research. Make it part of your own scholarship,” he said.
While he has the lectures, labs, papers, discussions online and in class, and research projects, Wu tries to take it a step further.
“Anytime, when I discuss a subject, I try to use my research or that of my colleagues to explain it. The students will be much more interested and engaged than if we just use exemplary cases from textbooks or elsewhere.”
About half of the students are in natural resource-related majors, and sometimes others decide to change to natural resource majors after having his classes. But even more important is paying attention to the non-majors for whom this may be the only ecology or science course they will ever have.
“They will be the leaders tomorrow, and their understanding of science will be important. It will influence their behavior – how they engage, evaluate and make decisions.”
Wu said students must understand the “process” of science.
“It’s not something you can teach them from a book – they need to have the practice, about discovering, evidence-based reasoning, and learning how to design processes to solve problems.”
In his introductory course, he wants all the students to experience science. So he has designed a five-week Ecological Inquiry Project based on a fellow Texas A&M professor’s research on grizzly bears in Alaska.
Grizzlies typically are loners but are forced to aggregate during the salmon run. The students are asked to go through hundreds of pictures taken as a part of the study and watch the bears, when and where they fish and how they interact.
The students must find interesting patterns and then use the scientific process: Formulate a testable hypothesis, identify evidence needed to test the hypothesis and determine how to collect and analyze the data. They write a report following a rubric on their research, including their hypothesis, methods, results and discussions. Then the reports are peer reviewed, which helps them learn peer- and self-assessment, Wu said.
Each student reviews seven different reports, the first three being high, medium and low quality reports to learn and calibrate how to evaluate. The next three are reports of fellow students. The final one they evaluate is their own, so by the end of the process, they will look at it with a different perspective, he said.
“The students learn this way,” Wu said. “It’s a lot of work; a lot of emails to deal with. And some may say in these introductory courses, it is less important. But I believe it is extremely important. These early courses play an important role in how they feel about science and their major and how they develop their skills.
“It is important and challenging, and that makes it interesting, even after 20 years,” Wu said. “Students know. They listen to you for five minutes and know if you really care about them and their learning.”
And, he said, it is rewarding.
Wu has served on 88 different graduate student committees, in addition to the 31 he has chaired or co-chaired.
“There’s a great deal of interaction, which has forged much collaboration. Feedback from students opens your mind and leads you to think about things you might not have thought about. It allows me to take that in and enrich my own research.”
