Courses I teach at UNCG:

• BIO 431 The Biosphere (Fall 2021; Spring 2022, Fall 2022- undergraduate class)-
• BIO 731 Environmental Health Sciences I: Organisms to Ecosystems (Fall 2021; Fall 2022- Required course for new Ph.D. students)
• BIO 330 Evolution (Spring 2022- co taught with Malcolm Schug)-
• BIO 449/648 Plant Physiological Ecology (Fall 2022 graduate and undergraduate)
• BIO 749 Biology Lab Rotations (Fall 2002)

Here is a link to an editorial I published in the 9/2022 issue of American Biology Teacher (Considering Equality, Equity in Biology Instruction) that talks about my teaching style. The editorial discusses teaching in an "equality" or fairness based classroom vs teaching in an "equity" based classroom and the success I have had with student engagement and achievement by focusing on doing the best that I can to meet students where they are and offer the flexibility and support they need to reach their potential in a course. 

Please email me at jscoleman@uncg.edu if you are interested in student comments or aggregate teaching scores

Some musings on how returning to a teacher-scholar role after 25 years as an administrator has made me realize that teaching is where you change the world

About 25 years ago, when I did a rotation as a program officer running the program for Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology at the National Science Foundation, I discovered that administrators were not necessarily evil people who wore business suits, were addicted to wielding power indiscriminately, and were on a mission to make faculty lives as miserable as possible. In fact, I discovered that in the program officer role that I could facilitate the success of others and organizations. I also discovered that facilitating the success of others was rewarding, and much to my surprise, I found out I was good at it.

I then moved out of my faculty role an into a 25 year long journey as an administrator, including as the chief research officer at the Desert Research Institute, then the University of Missouri and then Rice University.  I had great success in those roles-- and success isn't hard to measure-- the quality and quantity of research grew dramatically in all three institutions.

But, still, what I was proudest about in my career was seeing lives of students transformed because they met me when I taught at Syracuse University. Thus, I missed the entirety of the academic mission. I also discovered at Rice, that although elite private universities have spectacular students and faculty, and more financial resources than their public counterparts, that my heart was in the transformational power of public higher education. So, I was willing to ignore the political guerilla warfare that surrounds every public institution, because I really believed that public higher education was one of the greatest transformational forces that people have ever invented.

That led me to a role as Dean in the College of Humanities and Sciences at VCU- a truly transfomational place. And, to provost roles in three public institutions.  In all of those places, I had great success in improving student success measured by retention and graduation, improving the quantity and quality of research, hiring great people, and supporting the full range of disciplines in a university and in friend and fund raising. In these roles I always made some time to teach, but my schedule only allowed me to teach smaller seminar type courses.  Those were always the best hour or two of the week. 

Yet, although I came into work every day with the goal of making my college or my institution better, and felt and received feedback that I did, in the end it didn't seem very meaningful.  The turnover in senior admin positions is high, and each new person usually comes and undoes what the last person did.  And, let's face it, how many of you can remember who your president/chancellor, provost or dean were when you were in school?  I was in a forestry school as and undergraduate and graduate student and in both cases the dean was an advisor so I remember them. I don't think I ever knew who the president was and definitely had never heard of the provost at Yale or Maine. But, I remember just about every one of my professors.  There are a couple of professor who were really bad and I still feel animosity toward them.  But, others transformed my life with their enthusiasm, their belief in me, and with making their subjects exciting. These are people I  have never forgotten and will remain grateful to them forever. And, I have tried to pay forward the exceptional teaching styles, the caring, and the believing in students that characterized the best professors I had.  I think about those individuals almost every day.

In January 2021, I had no choice other than to return to the faculty at UNCG- it was a painful experience.  But, in doing so I am back to teaching subjects that I love (organismal biology, ecosystem/biome science, and evolution).  We are a minority serving institution, with a large number of Pell grant recipients, a large number of first generation students, and a large number of adult and non-traditional students. These students inspire me every day.

Also, I have suffered from depression for my entire life and anxiety over the last 10 years or so.  I made a commitment to myself to always be open about my mental health challenges in order build awareness that conditions like depression are diseases, every bit as much a disease as cancer, and far more deadly to students in their early twenties.  I also talk about it because I want people to know that it can be managed, but that you can't manage it alone,  And, I want students to see that I am not afraid of any stigma associated with admitting struggles.

I knew as provost that our student body was in crisis with mental health, partly related to COVID. And, I also knew that many of them had to work many hours while going to school, had families and children to take care of, commuted long distances and had financial hardships. But, the extent to which mental health, financial instability, work hours (many of my students work 40+ hours/week while taking a full load), and home issues serve as obstacles to their education was far greater than I could ever have imagined. In my first undergraduate class here that had 52 students I got to know all of the students well.  There may have been 10 students who had any resemblance to what I would consider a "normal" student, living close to campus, working maybe 10 hours a week, and was able to create blocks of time for school work.

So, I engaged with my active and project-based learning teaching style. Any student that missed class was contacted by me with a message that simply said "I missed you today, are you Ok?" - many would respond that they weren't OK and began to open up as trust was built. I talked to students about mental illness. At least 60% of the class was suffering from severe depression, debilitating anxiety, uncontrolled ADHD, untreated Bi-Polar disorder- some were in treatment, some were not.  Most came from immigrant or first generation families that do not recognize mental illness, so they had little support.  I worked with these students, met them where they were, was flexible with them in due dates, etc.  It was a lot of work. In my Evolution class of 120 students, we used digital checkpoint surveys five times during the semester. Each time around 60 students would reveal significant mental health or off campus challenges in each one. Every one of those students was contacted by me. I exposed myself as way to build trust.  This engagement was the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my academic career.

I received amazing student evaluations. More importantly, student comments indicated that I changed their lives, kept them from dropping out, gave them the strength to seek behavioral health support,  and allowed them to love the material. I had 220 students my first year teaching and you will see in the attached comments that I have just under 160 email notes or comments  that were made in Canvas telling me that i was the most caring professor they have ever had, that I had changed their lives, and even made them feel better about people.

The moral of the story is that despite being paid less than half as much as I made as provost, but still working the same 60-80 hour work weeks, I discovered that my calling is to be a teacher-scholar.  The difference I can make in the world by supporting students who will pay it forward and forward is infinitely greater than the impact I could ever have as a senior administrator working in a cloistered echo chamber, where we argue about the future of higher education, while we try to make the ridiculously large number of university stakeholders with competing interests happy. And, much to my disgust, even though I am politically liberal, as administrative leaders we had no choice but to buy into a "woke" agenda, appease those who feel like victims, and act as thought police while we try to keep academic freedom., and try to not get our heads taken off by Republican legislators. 

I love the subjects I teach (in my case ecology, organismal biology, global change and evolution). I am curious and interested in students who awe me every day in how they overcome challenges I could never have imagined when I was an undergrad.  I relish the impact I can have on students, and how that impact grows as they go out into the world and pay it forward.  In many ways I feel sorry for the 25 years in administration- I really felt like I had a positive impact in the moment.  But, I don't think the good I did will  last.  My work with students, in the words of David Brooks of the NY Times, "seeing other people with the eyes of the heart, seeing them in their full experience, suffering with their full suffering, walking with them on their path" and casting intense and caring to each and every student (the last part is paraphrased from David)  and doing so while unlocking their curiosity and interest in the world around them, is ethereal business with a lasting effect.

Take a look at the student comments I posted above in this section so you can get a sense of how rewarding teaching can be.

BTW- I currently teach BIO 431 (The Biosphere- 50-60 students); BIO 330 Evolution (100-120 students); Plant physiological ecology (10 students) and our required class for entering Ph.D. student on environmental health sciences: from organisms to ecosystems. I also have a cadre of undergraduate students in my lab (taking BIO 499) and 2 Ph.D. students working with me. And, I serve as the Graduate Director for the department