THE PASSION TO TEACH: A DIALOGUE WITH BRIAN P. COPPOLA

Abstract

Dr. Brian P. Coppola is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. He was born in 1957, the same year that Sputnik launched, and was educated by many of the progressive school science movements of the 1960s. He excelled in the college preparatory program at Pinkerton Academy, in Derry, NH. He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry in 1978 from the University of New Hampshire, where he also pursued his interest in art, particularly drawing. In 1980, during graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, while volunteering as the first study group leader in organic chemistry for the Greater University Tutorial Service (GUTS), Coppola had a chance encounter with Harry Behrman. Behrman invented the GUTS program as a part of his PhD in Education, and he ended up sitting in the back of Coppola’s study group room, taking field notes for his thesis. Every week, Behrman and Coppola had a few hours of intense conversation about education as a field of scholarly endeavor, the integration of which into science formed the foundation of Coppola’s professional interests and future plans