Harvard professor to speak at WWU May 13

Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, will visit the Western Washington University campus Tuesday, May 13, for two presentations: one focused on instructional and assessment strategies and one focused on physics.

In addition to his physics expertise, Mazur is an oft-cited author for alternative teaching and assessment strategies. The lending library at WWU's Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment includes his book "Peer Instruction: A User's Manual," a foundational text on teaching large lecture classes interactively. His talks are inspiring and thought-provoking.

1:30 to 2:30 p.m. May 13, SL 150: Why you can pass tests and still fail in the real world

Why is it that stellar students sometimes fail in the workplace while dropouts succeed? One reason is that most, if not all, of our current assessment practices are inauthentic. Just as the lecture focuses on the delivery of information to students, so does assessment often focus on having students regurgitate that same information back to the instructor. Consequently, assessment fails to focus on the skills that are relevant in life in the 21st Century. Unless we rethink our approach to assessment, it will be very difficult to produce a meaningful change in education.

3 to 4 p.m. May 13, CF 105: Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery

We use femtosecond laser pulses to manipulate sub-cellular structures inside live and fixed cells. Using only a few nanojoules of laser pulse energy, we are able to selectively disrupt individual mitochondria in live bovine capillary epithelial cells, and cleave single actin fibers in the cell cytoskeleton network of fixed human fibro-blast cells. We have also used the technique to micromanipulate the neural network of C. Elegans, a small nematode. Our laser scalpel can snip individual axons without causing any damage to surrounding tissue, allowing us to study the function of individual neurons with a precision that was not achievable before.

Eric Mazur is a renowned scientist and researcher in optical physics and in education research, and a sought-after author and speaker. He joined the faculty at Harvard shortly after obtaining his doctorate at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Mazur is author or co-author of more than 250 scientific publications and holds two dozen patents. He has also written on education and is the author of "Peer Instruction: A User's Manual," a book that explains how to teach large lecture classes interactively. In 2006 he helped produce the award-winning DVD Interactive Teaching. He is the co-founder of Learning Catalytics, a platform for promoting interactive problem solving in the classroom. His visit is sponsored by Pearson at no cost to WWU.