Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

Professor of the Year John Iverson in the field with Earlham biology student Dorothy Christopher ’07 and department property manager David Wolfson ’05. Iverson’s former student Sarah Schaack ’96, now a Ph.D. candidate in biology at Indiana University, credits her undergraduate mentor with “opening my eyes” to the variety of scientific opportunities available to her after graduating from the College.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has named Earlham College Professor of Biology John Iverson its 2005 Indiana Professor of the Year.

One of the world’s leading herpetologists, specializing in the study of turtles and iguanas and their respective ecologies, Iverson was recognized formally for his “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching” during ceremonies in Washington, D.C., on
Nov. 17.

Co-sponsored by the international Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the Professor of the Year program has honored outstanding college and university teachers from across the country since 1981. This year, more than 400 professors from various public and private institutions in 40 states were nominated for consideration by the Carnegie Foundation judges, who include senior academic officials, college and university faculty members, and education reporters and students as well as representatives of corporations, foundations and professional associations with interests in higher education.

Although the program accepts nominations in four categories — for outstanding professors at the community college, baccalaureate, master’s degree-granting and research university levels — only one winner is chosen for each state. Candidates are considered primarily in terms of their impact on and involvement with undergraduate students; their scholarly approach to teaching and learning; their contributions to undergraduate education in the institution, community and profession; and testimony from colleagues and current and former students.

With his selection for 2005 Iverson becomes Earlham’s second statewide Professor of the Year honoree, following Professor of English Paul Lacey, who earned the distinction in 1992. Lacey retired from the College in 2001.

A member of the Earlham faculty since 1978 and director of the College’s Joseph Moore Museum of Natural History for the past 23 years, Iverson has been instrumental not only in continuing but also enhancing Earlham’s reputation for excellence in the natural sciences. Today, with roughly one-fifth of the College’s graduates overall having majored in biology, Earlham ranks eighth nationally (between Johns Hopkins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the percentage of its biology majors who have since gone on to earn Ph.D.s in the field.

In Iverson’s view, such success is the result of “maintaining an active, hands-on, year-round research program that involves as many students as possible.

“It is not enough simply to teach students about science. Rather, we must teach students how to do science,” adds Indiana’s newest Professor of the Year, who insists he sees himself not as a teacher so much as “an assistant in learning.”

“Collaboration in and out of the classroom is of utmost importance to me. I make every effort to treat my students as colleagues, as collaborators in the teaching and learning process,” Iverson says. As proof he offers the approximately 150 scientific papers he’s had published in nearly three decades with the College, more than 40 of which were co-authored by Earlham undergraduates — a remarkable accomplishment for students who had yet to earn even their initial academic credentials.

“I thrive on these interactions with students,” says Iverson, believing that “synergistic educational relationships” allow all those involved to “learn more and teach better than we possibly could alone.”

That an extraordinary number of Earlham graduates have progressed to graduate study in basic biology is “in no small part due to the excitement John transmits to students when sharing his own research with them in the field,” reports Sarah Schaack ’96, currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biology at Indiana University. Schaack is one of three former students of Iverson who wrote letters to the Carnegie Foundation supporting his nomination — by Earlham Provost Len Clark — for Professor of the Year.

During her years at the College, Schaack recounts that she, like “legions” of other Earlham biology students, was able to accompany Iverson on field trips to each of his three long-term study sites at Dewart Lake in Indiana (frogs and turtles), the Nebraska Sandhills (turtles) and the Bahamas, where Iverson’s research into the Allen Cays rock iguana is now the longest ongoing field study of any lizard population in the world.

Her off-campus experiences with Iverson taught her “to think synthetically and go beyond what I was learning in the classroom,” says Schaack, who nevertheless found that Iverson’s “syllabi were packed, thorough, well-organized, and the lectures and reading included recent discoveries and advancements specific to the field.

“It is well known that this latter component is often lacking in undergraduate biology courses,” Schaack says. She also credits her undergraduate mentor with “opening my eyes to all the various opportunities available to me after graduation, which has resulted in an incredible spate of research experiences all over the world.”

The summer before his senior year at Earlham, Geoffrey Smith ’90 accompanied Iverson on a research trip to Mexico. Two biology classmates went with him. Today all three are teaching and research faculty at other highly regarded institutions: Smith at Denison University, Erika Barthelmess ’90 at St. Lawrence University and Catherine deRivera ’90 at Portland State University. Just another way a man whose expertise is the life history strategies of long-lived species has advanced a research legacy at Earlham to which hundreds of past students have contributed.

“John epitomizes what it means to be a great teacher,” says Smith, who under Iverson’s guidance during his first year was challenged by the opportunity to take a junior-level course, Vertebrate Zoology (BIO 346).

“My own courses that I now teach, including Vertebrate Zoology, can trace their roots back to that class and how John got his students engaged in doing biology,” Smith says. “I owe much of my success as a faculty member at a liberal arts school to what I learned from John as an undergraduate.”

Iverson and his wife, Sheila, recently executed a conservation easement on 70 acres of native Indiana ravine forest the couple purchased southwest of campus. The tract is adjacent to Wildman Woods, Earlham-owned property that previously was “land-locked” by surrounding parcels controlled by parties not associated with the College. The easement not only promises the Iversons’ land will never be developed, but also that students will have continued access to Wildman Woods for generations to come.

“John has single-handedly assured Earlham students will forever have wild places nearby to campus in which to study,” says Provost Clark. “He is truly a teacher and scholar with unusual reach and influence.”