EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING
Helmut
Hirsch, Biological Sciences
By Carol Olechowski
For Helmut Hirsch, being a University at Albany faculty member gives him more than an opportunity to teach and conduct research. His position also affords him a chance to “act as an advocate for students and for other teachers.”
The role of advocate is one Hirsch clearly relishes. “I've had a reputation of being really outspoken," he admits. "But my outspokenness comes from a commitment to wanting the University - and its undergraduate program - to be the absolute best they can be.”
That same commitment to excellence extends to his teaching and his research. Hirsch, a Chicago native, became a teacher because “I have always wanted to understand how things come to be the way they are, be they individuals or societies.” He discovered human development as a University of Chicago undergraduate working with child development psychologists Lawrence Kohlberg and Sheldon White, and with “one of the pioneers in human sociobiology, Daniel Freedman.” In graduate school at Stanford University, where he was a teaching assistant, and later, as a beginning assistant professor at Albany, Hirsch discovered that “I love to teach and apparently do it well. For me, teaching is like an addiction; I feel most alive when it is a part of my life.”
Hirsch especially enjoys teaching at the college level. At Albany, he finds that “I can combine and integrate my research interest - to understand how experience affects the developing brain - with classroom teaching, where what I have learned in the laboratory has direct implications and applications.” Hirsch likens his work to “what one of our finest local high school teachers described as setting a fine table and then sharing that feast with her students. Creating a setting within which students can learn, and sharing their excitement as they discover the power of their minds, is, for me, an unmatched experience.”
Although he has taught many courses in his 27 years at Albany, Hirsch cites three favorites, Brain: The Final Frontier, World Food Crisis, which was developed by Professor Margaret Stewart, and The Neural Basis of Behavior.
Hirsch is obviously concerned not only about his students' future success, but about their lives today. In his office on a recent Tuesday morning, he and two of his students, seniors Tara Torno and Jason Nixon, fell easily into conversation, with the teacher asking questions about their studies and the young people offering observations about course requirements and classroom dynamics. The air of mutual respect is unmistakable - and seems to echo Hirsch's relationships with his colleagues both within and outside the Department of Biological Sciences.
“I have seen Helmut Hirsch lecture in several courses, and his enthusiasm and energy tend to rub off on his students,” says John Schmidt, professor of biological sciences and director of the Neurobiology Research Center. “They appreciate his ability to take complex material and explain it clearly, concisely, and in ways that they can understand, while maintaining a rigorous approach. The esteem in which students hold him is shown in the consistently high ratings they give him and in the superlatives they routinely use to describe him.”
“Helmut is a brilliant teacher,” reflects Professor of Biological Sciences Helen Ghiradella, one of Hirsch's research and writing collaborators. “He is also a mentor, a role model, and a guide, willing to take the time and provide the perspective to get students over the humps that would otherwise interfere with their growth.” Adds John M. Murphy, the Office for the Vice President for Student Affairs' director of judicial affairs: “I've known Helmut for years, and I've found him to be a true scholar-citizen who genuinely cares for our students and challenges them to think at the highest levels of critical thought. He approaches his service as chair of the Committee on Student Conduct, as he does his teaching, with a genuine regard for students and the best interests of the University community. Helmut also finds time to serve as a volunteer for our Saratoga County Mediation Program, applying his expert problem-solving skills to assisting families and business persons in resolving interpersonal disputes.”
Looking back over a career distinguished by numerous achievements, Hirsch modestly sifts through the highlights. He was the first to demonstrate that experience can have specific effects on structure and function of nerve cells in the mammalian brain. For the past ten years, he has used the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model for understanding developmental plasticity, and will be writing two major reviews covering that work. Most recently, with Ghiradella and Greg Lnenicka of Biological Sciences, Hassaram Bakhru of Physics, and researchers from Russell Sage and Union colleges, Hirsch has been involved in “a multi-institutional collaboration looking at the effects of the neurotoxin lead.” His writing in Science and other leading international journals is a source of pride, as are his various grants and awards. Hirsch was the first Albany faculty member to receive two very prestigious and selective tributes: an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship in neuroscience and a Whitehall Foundation grant. Those honors, however, pale in comparison to the President's Undergraduate Leadership Award, which “I really treasure because it came from the students,” and to the President's and Chancellor's awards for Excellence in Teaching.
Hirsch does not measure his success in teaching and research by the recognition he is accorded. Rather, he feels that his greatest achievement at Albany, to date, was “co-founding a faculty-initiated interdisciplinary major in human biology. Our purpose in creating this major was the belief that students wishing to deal with global issues needed a strong grounding in understanding the human organism. We could only accomplish this goal in the context of an interdisciplinary major.”
He concludes, “I believe in creating opportunities where our students can grow and be the most fantastic people in the world. And they do.”