Dan Rittschof leads a class into the water in search of marine life. | Scott Taylor
Following Dan Rittschof in Search of Snails
Zoologist uses the outside as a classroom
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Durham, NC -- Students who take classes with Daniel Rittschof at Duke’s Marine Lab in Beaufort will at some point find themselves wading in a shallow estuary after dark, looking for crabs, fish, and snails.
“In the middle of the night with the stars overhead and the lights of Beaufort in the background,” says Peter Knowlton, a pre-med biology major from Reidsville, North Carolina, “it was a pretty surreal experience. He taught us how to catch fish barehanded. It was definitely a highlight of the course.”
Rittschof takes his students outside to teach them about the ecology of the area around Beaufort. “I take people on a two-and-a-half hour walk,” Rittschof says, “and I guarantee somewhere between 25 and 35 things you can hold in your hand and at least a million individuals to look at.” He goes at night because that’s when a lot of the animals are active, and because he believes the unusual experience enhances learning. “A little bit of adrenaline helps you learn,” he says. “If you’ve never been out in the dark, the first time you see a large stingray, it gets your attention.”
Knowlton says Rittschof is a terrific teacher whose unique teaching style has earned him something of a cult following among students at the Marine Lab. This spring, Rittschof’s teaching earned him the Robert B. Cox Award. The award, given each year to a Duke faculty member, includes a $5,000 stipend and a 1.5 percent increase in base salary. Rittschof, a professor of zoology, has been at Duke since 1982.
Rittschof looks at effective teaching through the lens of science. He believes many students are motivated by negative rewards, such as the fear of getting a bad grade on a test or paper. He turns that around by dishing out positive reinforcement when students ask questions, think creatively, share what they find interesting, and cooperate with the group. “I tell them right up front what I’m expecting them to do,” he says, “and I talk about the molecular basis of positive rewards—endorphins and opate peptides.”
Another of his strategies is to get to know students, then engage them based on their individual goals and interests. For example, one day in an endocrinology class, Knowlton wondered aloud how vitamin D is synthesized in the skin. Knowlton recalls, “Dr. Dan looked off into space for a few minutes and then said, ‘Peter, give us a presentation on that in a few weeks.’”
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Dan Rittschof at the Marine Lab. Photo by Scott Taylor
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Teaching students how to find the answers to their scientific questions is part of Rittschof’s commitment to increasing the public’s scientific literacy. He also hopes to instill an appreciation of science, he says, in much the same way that a music appreciation course teaches appreciation of music. “Duke generates world leaders,” he says. “I think we’re doing society a disservice if we don’t teach the appreciation of science to those kinds of people.”
Rittschof doesn’t expect to convert his students, most of whom are hoping to become doctors, into research scientists like himself. But, he says, “I expect to change them forever. I expect the students will look at the world differently as a result of having a class with me.”