Happy National Teacher’s Day

Teachers affect all our lives. I mean, that you can even read that sentence is because of a teacher. Whether the word teacher conjures up images of a fearsome nun or a Miss Othmar-esque crush, we owe them a lot for putting up with our sass, our smells, and our low attention spans long enough to give us enough knowledge to function in the adult world.

There is less sass and (presumably) fewer smells among college students. But educators at that level nonetheless carry a heavy load in getting their charges to concentrate on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Incredibly, a great many of those educators also do groundbreaking research, provide mentoring and advice, and/or invent technologies that change our lives.

winklemas and burtonAn Illinois Sampler presents personal accounts from faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other contributors, about their research and how it enriches and energizes their teaching. Contributors from the humanities, engineering, social and natural sciences, and other disciplines explore how ideas, methods, and materials merge to lead their students down life-changing paths to creativity, discovery, and solutions. As faculty introduce their classes to work conducted from the Illinois prairie to the farms of Africa, from densely populated cities to dense computer coding, they generate an atmosphere where research, teaching, and learning thrive inside a feedback loop of education across disciplines.