Messenger - Vol. 3, No. 4, Page 16
Summer 1994
Excellence-in-Teaching Awards
Brian Ackerman grew up in New York City, earned a bachelor's
degree in English at Rutgers University in New Jersey and became a
case worker in the Suffolk County Department of Social Services on
Long Island, N.Y.
In his Wolf Hall office, the professor of psychology recalls that
first full-time job: "I was idealistic. I wanted to make things better
through my case work. Eventually, I saw that, case by case, nothing
ever changed. I couldn't see myself making any impact, or only,
perhaps, occasionally."
He did psychiatric case work at Columbia University Graduate
School of Social Work and earned a doctorate in psychology from the
University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island.
Unfortunately, he found that his timing was poor and college
teaching jobs were scarce. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the
Centre for Research in Human Development at the University of Toronto,
he came to the University of Delaware in 1979.
Ackerman entered graduate school because he wanted to teach, but
then realized that, for a good college teaching job, you get hired and
noticed based upon the success of your research.
"Research is A through Y and teaching is Z," Ackerman says.
Fortunately, he found he was skilled at research and loved it. "So,
I'm here balancing the two things I love to do," he says.
With more than 15 years of experience in the college classroom,
Ackerman teaches developmental psychology and the "History and Systems
of Psychology" to junior and senior psychology majors.
His developmental psychology course, which also is taught to
master's and doctoral graduate students, focuses on how children's
constitutional and environmental factors can be identified and then
used to predict later development.
"What goes on in the classroom is almost selfish," he says. "I
probably learn more than the students do. It makes me improve my
organizational skills in order to connect with the students. Also,
it's just this incredible, delightful intellectual activity.
"Students are idealistic, and I appeal to that. What they are
learning here is how to think and how to analyze, not simply facts. My
goal is to teach them to teach themselves. That's the only thing I can
give them. And they like it. All of them like it. They recognize that
they are never bored in my classes. I challenge them and they
respond."
* * *
Two things drew Errol Lloyd to the University of Delaware: He
said he felt the quality of teaching was on a higher level than that
found at most other research universities and he was impressed by the
research and the teaching of faculty in the Department of Computer and
Information Sciences.
While Lloyd's research and courses involve design and analysis of
algorithms, he also teaches a course in C++ programming. This computer
language is used to develop computer software useful in a wide range
of applications, from making chemical analyses, to processing travel
reservation systems, to executing air traffic control operations.
In his course, students must learn both the programming language
itself and how to write programs in that language. But, Lloyd says,
they don't learn the latter by listening to him lecture or by reading
textbooks.
"They learn by working and struggling and coming in to the office
to discuss their problems and fixing their errors," he says.
A Baltimore native, Lloyd says his late father, was a high school
math teacher for 32 years. It was the exposure to the elder Lloyd's
hard work and dedication that was influential in the college
professor's decision to enter teaching.
"There's something else that was true of my dad's classes, and it
is true of mine: We both are very demanding of our students. I think
students need to do a lot of work to learn how to program and how to
do problem solving."
Students in Lloyd's classes are not treated to the sit-back-and-
take-notes lecture routine. He presents questions and together, as a
group, they develop solutions, starting with the obvious and,
eventually, making the outcome better through refinement and group
input.
"On the first day of every class," Lloyd says, "I tell them the
thing I enjoy the least is lecturing for one hour and 20 minutes
nonstop. I hate to be in a class where I'm the only one saying
anything."
* * *
A sequence of fortunate accidents" is how Ajay K. Manrai,
associate professor of marketing in the College of Business and
Economics, describes his arrival at the University of Delaware.
Born in India, he earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical
engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi and
an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. For the next
several years, he worked for Gabriel Shock Absorbers, partially owned
by a U.S. company, in Bombay, India.
With the support of business and professional mentors and
elders-referred to as "well wishers" in India-Manrai decided to pursue
a doctorate in marketing, with a minor in econometrics and
optimization theory.
In 1982, he and his wife, Lalita, also an associate professor of
marketing at Delaware, moved to Evanston, Ill., to attend Northwestern
University.
After one year as an instructor at Northwestern's Kellogg
Graduate School of Management and five years as an assistant professor
at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Manrai accepted
his current position at the Newark campus in 1991, joining his wife
who had been on the Delaware faculty since 1987.
Manrai's field of expertise is the mathematical modeling of
consumer perceptions, preferences and choices. In marketing, he said,
the central question is how consumers make selections, how they choose
one brand over another. He focuses on the four "Ps": product, price,
promotion and physical channels of distribution.
Manrai teaches two graduate-level courses, one on marketing
management and the other on marketing research. The first is an
introductory course in marketing; the second is an advanced,
analytical course.
He says he considers teaching a great job for several reasons: He
has the flexibility to conduct research on the topics he deems
appropriate, and he has input into what courses he teaches, how to
design those courses and how to incorporate his research into his
classes.
"I'm trying to combine academic rigor with practical relevance,"
Manrai says. "In teaching marketing, I keep asking the questions: 'So
what?' and 'How does this apply to the real world?'"
* * *
Years before Andrew Zydney earned his doctorate in chemical
engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he knew he
wanted to teach, and, immediately after his graduation in 1985, he
joined the University's chemical engineering faculty.
Now an associate professor, he recalls choosing Delaware because
of the excellent reputation of its chemical engineering department and
its geographical location.
The focus of Zydney's research and teaching involves the
separation and purification of a wide range of materials and products.
For any commercial product-from petrochemicals to drugs and cosmetics
to food-the waste and byproducts must be controlled and then disposed
of in order to develop a cost-effective and environmentally safe
process.
Zydney teaches his students the fundamental principles and the
practical guidelines required to develop commercial processes that can
effectively separate and purify these different products.
He says he likes the interaction with students outside the
classroom. Much of this takes place when he responds to their
questions about solving problems he has presented in class.
"I set high goals and standards by assigning problems that I know
are difficult. Very few of my students are able to do the work without
assistance from me or a teaching assistant," he says. "They learn by
doing, and usually with guidance along the way. I take that role
seriously. So, I am always available to give time to provide guidance
and direction. That, to me, is the most enjoyable part of teaching."
Zydney says he particularly enjoys his job when students
recognize their errors, shift direction and become satisfied with
their own abilities. This often occurs when they discuss a problem
and, suddenly, in the midst of the session, realize they have the
ability to solve the complicated question.
-Ed Okonowicz, '69, '84M