Dan Keyser’s Edward Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award Speech: Words of Wisdom for Teachers

Daniel Keyser’s Acceptance Speech for the 2014 Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award

I never expected to receive an award for teaching, let alone an award named after Ed Lorenz.

I offer my heartfelt thanks to my former and current students who nominated me for the Lorenz Award and to the Selection Committee for conferring the Award.

It is an honor and a privilege to join the list of prior Lorenz Award winners, many of whom I have known, admired, and been inspired by from the start of my professional career.

I will now share some words of wisdom about teaching that I have collected during my academic career:

Teaching allows you to leave students better off than you found them.

Teaching allows you to learn more from your students than they learn from you.

Teaching allows you to amplify your impact.

Teaching requires you to listen more and talk less, for me an acquired skill.

It takes a faculty, not just an individual faculty member, to educate a student.

In closing, it has been said that to save a life is to save the world.

These words of wisdom may be adapted for the teaching profession to say that to educate a student is to change the world.

Thank you.

Photo by John Knox, text of speech from University at Albany.