Faculty Honors

An astronomer with a stellar teaching style

Alex Filippenko draws in even the science-wary with his passion and pedagogical pizazz in his popular Introduction to General Astronomy class. (Steve McConnell photo)

Winter 2007 | What makes an outstanding professor? Try theme songs for every class, 40 different T-shirts to introduce each day’s lecture topic, flying-candy-bar demonstrations . . . and, not least, “the ability to light the astral fire in undergraduates,” as one admiring student put it.

These are just a few of the bonuses Alex Filippenko sprinkles throughout his introductory astronomy class, which draws between 750 and 800 students per semester. They also earned him this year’s Professor of the Year Award, conferred jointly by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The award, announced in November, acknowledges “outstanding professors for their dedication to teaching, commitment to students, and innovative instructional methods.” Four national professors of the year are chosen, including one from a research university like Berkeley.

A world-renowned expert on exploding stars (supernovae), black holes, galaxies, and cosmology, Filippenko has taught Introduction to General Astronomy once a year since he joined the astronomy faculty 20 years ago; he estimates that one-sixth of all Berkeley undergraduates take the course at some point.

For four of the past six years he has been voted “Best Professor” on campus in informal student polls, and his course is one of the most popular on campus. At RateMyProfessors.com one anonymous reviewer urged students not to miss his Halloween lecture, in which he dresses up as a black hole and throws out astronomy-themed candy — Starbursts, Milky Ways, Mars Bars, Eclipses — to demonstrate the quantum-mechanical evaporation of black holes postulated by Stephen Hawking.

The enthusiasm he brings to the esoteric topics of astronomy draws as much as one-fifth of the class to additional three-hour informal sessions on topics not covered in the class and not on the exam.

“Students … sit on the edges of their seats for three hours that fly by as Alex works his magic, explaining extremely complicated topics of theoretical physics in clear and simple terms to a room of mostly first- and second-year non-science majors,” wrote former student Heather Newman in a nomination letter.

Vying for an all-nighter
Each semester, Filippenko holds a contest to select a dozen students to accompany him, in groups of three, for nights of research at Lick Observatory near San Jose. The competition draws up to 80 entries, ranging from essays and posters to paintings, songs, poems, and the occasional batch of cookies (he’s not immune to food bribes, he says). The winning students earn the rare privilege of seeing how exploding supernovae are studied with modern instruments and discussing cosmology until dawn.

Over the past 20 years he also has invited more than 60 undergraduates to join his research team; collectively, using his robotic telescope, they have discovered and received credit for about 600 new supernovae. He has also supervised many graduate students on their way to earning doctorates.

In addition to the observatory visits, he organizes “star parties” to view meteor showers, eclipses, and other celestial events, and occasionally drops in at the residence halls to have dinner with students.

Astronomy 10 is intended for freshmen and sophomores in the humanities and arts, not for science majors. “Many of these are precisely those students who had a negative experience with science in junior high and high school because they weren’t taught the right way. They come in very frightened and apprehensive about the course, and they leave having really enjoyed it, finally understanding the value and beauty of science.”

Filippenko strongly believes that excellence in research and teaching go hand-in-hand — his own research is documented in about 500 published papers, and he is one of the world’s most widely cited astronomers.

“Places like Berkeley are often criticized for not caring that much about undergraduate teaching,” he says. “Having a national award in the category of doctoral and research universities shows that Berkeley in particular, and research universities in general, really do value teaching.”

And there’s no need for parents to be left out: to watch Filippenko’s course on the web, go to webcast.berkeley.edu, click on “Courses,” and select “Astro C10.”