It's inevitable that, when you teach the same courses, you're going to want to talk to each other about them, ask questions, ask if they've ever run across a really good experiment. This sort of exchange occurs daily in the Wabash chemistry department, whose unique team-teaching approach to the courses taught in the first two years of its curriculum enhances teaching and learning for both students and professors. The department teams senior and junior faculty up in teaching of the introductory courses that are often the domain of teaching assistants at large universities. The result is a rich combination of wisdom, enthusiasm, inspiration, and teaching improvisation that turns out uncommonly accomplished majors while passing on solid knowledge and appreciation of the discipline to non-majors. Team-teaching is working as a team of faculty to try to implement new teaching strategies, to figure out together ways to present new or difficult material.
Different people bring different ideas to the team.
For example, this semester Chem 3 is being taught by David Phillips and our two new faculty, Scott Feller and Ann Taylor. Not only does it allow the new folks to learn from an experienced faculty member about our general chemistry course and how we teach, but it also allows them to bring their ideas to the course. New people are not apprentices-they're partners. They are learning and they're contributing too. John Zimmerman has been working for several years on utilitizing technology in the classroom.