C& EN TA L KS W ITH
BRIAN COPPOLA Award-winning professor uses STORYTELLING to engage students learning organic chemistry LINDA WANG, C&EN WASHINGTON
Coppola urges others to find their Arbor, organic chemistry professor Brian P. own voice when it comes to storytelling. Coppola sees every lecture as a story, and “There’s a sense that if you just got my set organic molecules are among his cast of of notes, that’s all you would need. But characters. Each class is like a new chapter you can’t play my notes any more than I in a novel. can play Beethoven,” he says. “It isn’t the “I see teaching very much as a formalized notes. It’s the expression of the notes and act of storytelling,” says Coppola, who is the what those things mean to me as I think Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry about trying to tell that story and convey at the university. “If you listen to researchthat understanding.” ers tell you about their research, they don’t Justin Lomont, a former student and launch into the statistical results or the now a doctoral student in chemistry at the laboratory data. What those scientists are University of California, Berkeley, says he’s interested in telling you is the story. And I adapted Coppola’s style of storytelling to his think that storytelling is an endemic part of own teaching approach, which earned him a human nature.” graduate teaching award. “I definitely try to Teaching organic chemistry lends itself emulate him in the classroom,” Lomont says. particularly well to the storytelling apCoppola says his passion for teaching proach because the material builds on itself, started at an early age.“In elementary school, Coppola says. “For the first time, students I stopped taking recess,” he says. “Instead are exposed to the idea that science is really of going outside, I stayed inside and helped an extended narrative, and it isn’t just a set of short stories,” he says. my peers. I was always the one standing at the board.” He credits his Coppola’s teaching style and his philosophy of education have own teachers with helping to shape his philosophy of teaching. earned him national recognition. In January, he was awarded the Coppola earned a B.S. degree in chemistry in 1978 from the Uni2012 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, a $250,000 versity of New Hampshire and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1984 prize from Baylor University to honor an exceptional teacher. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He joined the chemis“The relationship that Brian establishes with his students is try faculty at the University of Michigan in 1986 and became a full an important part of the way he teaches,” says Peter J. Alaimo, a professor in 2001. He served as associate chair of the chemistry former student of Coppola’s and now an associate professor of department there in 2002–12. chemistry at Seattle University. “He had this ability to make me In addition to teaching, Coppola cofounded the IDEA (Instructhink that, in a class of 700 students, we were having a one-on-one, tional Development & Educational Assessment) Institute, which intimate conversation about chemistry.” brings together faculty and students from science, math, Coppola has two simple ideas for how to improve and education to design new teaching methods. He is undergraduate education: “I would make PowerPoint “I think that also associate director of the University of Michiganillegal, and I would not permit multiple-choice exams,” Peking University Joint Institute. He recently returned he says.“These are completely unimaginative strategies storytelling is from a yearlong sabbatical at Peking University, where he an endemic that constrain improvisation. taught organic chemistry. He says the Chinese students “Part of storytelling is that it’s very much an impro- part of human took well to his storytelling approach. visation,” he continues. “I’ve probably taught organic nature.” With the $250,000 prize, Coppola is starting a founchemistry 60 times, and I’ve never done it the same way dation to support charitable organizations that are twice. I see the classroom as a place where one uses the interaction trying to improve science education. “I want to use my network with the students and the feedback you’re getting from them to of former students to be my eyes and ears around the country and shape the nature of the discourse.” come back to me with examples of good work,” he says. Despite the unpredictable nature of Coppola’s lectures, the At the end of the day, Coppola is having fun doing something conversations are anything but random. “I believe in the idea that that he loves. “Brian is one of these people who will never pass one has to think quite intentionally about all the decisions that you up an opportunity to teach someone something,” Alaimo says. “I make in front of a classroom, including the way you talk,” he says. think in part it’s because it’s so much fun for him and in part be“The way I choose to speak, the jokes that I tell, flipping a cussword cause every opportunity he has to teach he sees as an opportunity every now and then, whatever it happens to be, these are all very to learn.” ◾ deliberate acts just to make sure that it’s clear that I’m just another person and not the figure behind the lectern who Watch Coppola’s acceptance speech and VIDEO ONLINE creates a distance between him and his students.” storytelling approach at cenm.ag/coppola. 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