MRU chemistry professor Brett McCollum honoured with 3M National Teaching Fellowship
For students and colleagues who have benefited from his dedication to teaching, it will come as no surprise that Brett McCollum, PhD, professor of chemistry at Mount Royal University, has been named to a prestigious group of Canadian university educators.
McCollum joins the Council of 3M National Teaching Fellows, an award that has been likened to the Stanley Cup of university teaching. He is one of 10 post-secondary teachers from across the country to receive this honour in 2019 for excellence in educational leadership and undergraduate teaching.
“Brett embodies what Mount Royal University is all about in terms of putting teaching and the student experience first,” says Lesley Brown, provost and vice-president, Academic, at Mount Royal.
“We are thrilled that his groundbreaking work in the scholarship of teaching and learning has been recognized in this way.”
McCollum, already a Nexen Scholar of Teaching and Learning, an Apple Distinguished Educator, a software developer, and an education columnist, focuses his research on the effective uses of technology for teaching and learning, chemistry language learning, open education resources, and research partnerships with students.
His teaching areas have included general chemistry, organic, inorganic, physical, nuclear, and spectroscopy.
The Council of 3M National Teaching Fellows is a community of awardwinning teachers who are lifetime members of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Chemists, McCollum says, are experimentalists by training. This has led him to an evidence-based approach to teaching and learning.
“I see the scholarship of teaching and learning as a systematic inquiry into what works, what is possible and what is happening when faculty use their expertise to support students in their learning,” he says.
McCollum, who has been at MRU since 2008, was one of three faculty invited to test drive Mount Royal’s Academic Development Centre’s new Active Learning Classroom at MRU’s Riddell Library and Learning Centre.
The MRU Active Learning Classroom serves 36 students in teams of six. The instructor workstation is in the centre of the room. McCollum calls the room a physical representation of leading from the middle. The instructor is able to move between small-group discussions and provide support where needed.
He recalls that a few years ago students would arrive to his classes wearing headphones and plug back in as soon as class was over. There was little engagement with him or with each other, but he knew students wanted and needed more.
“I found that the Active Learning Classroom was a great space for me to model with them, and for them to model for each other, different strategies for engaging in course material.”
Using the classroom for the third-year science and politics of nuclear energy course he teaches with Duane Bratt, PhD, chair of the Department of Economics, Justice and Policy Studies, McCollum has seen students’ mid-term average improve by 18 per cent. In his organic chemistry classes, meanwhile, he tries to show students that it is a focus on problem solving, not memorization, that will help them achieve a coveted A.
“Convincing students of their role in the classroom is one of the biggest challenges I have, and the biggest responsibility,” McCollum says.
Mount Royal has a rich tradition of teaching. The individual student experience has been at the heart of the institution’s face to the world. While honoured to receive the fellowship, for McCollum it represents far more than his own efforts.
“I’m excited to be a representative from Mount Royal to a national conversation about teaching and learning.”
Jonathan Withey, DPhil, dean of science and technology at MRU, points to McCollum’s “extraordinary energy” directed at teaching.
“Brett brings imagination and courage in probing all elements of the learning process,” Withey says.
“He is an individual willing to tamper with the style and content of scientific education, such that the overall quality of the science itself might be improved.
“This is a proud moment for the entire university community.”