Michael Ellerby, Ph.D. wins Outstanding Teaching Award

The award requires the instructor to encourage students to think imaginatively, critically, and independently, mentor students through special projects, and interact with students outside the classroom enthusiastically and effectively.

Something else helped Ellerby exceed those expectations: the mentorship and guidance from one of his own teachers. At UC Santa Cruz, Frank Andrews, now an emeritus professor of chemistry, changed Dr. Ellerby’s life in the same way that Ellerby endeavors with his students.

While attending UC Santa Cruz as an undergraduate pursuing a degree in biology, Dr. Ellerby developed a degenerative disease that affected his back and neck. When a series of surgeries worsened the condition, Ellerby became unable to stand in laboratories or sit in lectures anymore.

“When I had exams, they would give them to me orally or we would drag a bean bag chair from professor’s office to professor’s office so I could go in and take tests,” says Ellerby. The pain prevented him from accomplishing most of the tasks required for a biology student. “That was a pretty serious time in life.”

The plan to become a neuroscientist seemed impossible, so Ellerby considered switching focus from biology to theoretical physics/chemistry. Ellerby’s chemistry teacher, Frank Andrews, happened to live around the corner from him, and was a theoretical chemist (which is a theoretical physicist that studies chemical dynamics). Ellerby knew that the calculations Andrews performed didn’t involve computers, only paper, something Ellerby could do laying down. It was a way for Ellerby to get through school in a less challenging way.

Andrews took on Ellerby as his apprentice in theoretical physics work, and as additional surgeries improved Ellerby’s health, as an apprentice teacher. He began teaching at age 25 with Andrew’s preceptorship and encouragement.

Despite the encouragement of Andrews, Ellerby went on to research work until the urge to teach again increased. In 2005 Ellerby was recruited as a founding member of the TUC College of Pharmacy and found a way back to his roots.

A lightbulb went on for Ellerby when Kathy Knapp, the first dean of TUC College of Pharmacy asked Ellerby if he would teach the pharmacy students pharmacokinetics. Ellerby found an opportunity to combine math and his teaching skills and present them in a context where every student could apply the knowledge almost immediately, in the real world, to help people. While at the TUC College of Pharmacy, Ellerby went on to include Biology, Pharmacology, Physical Pharmacy, Pharmaceutics, and Pharmacy Calculations in his teaching portfolio.

Ellerby’s claims that his success as a teacher is all thanks to Andrews. Ellerby applies the lessons he learned from his teacher and mentor: presenting material with the student’s perspective in mind, having multiple explanations for the complicated concepts, and presenting involved solutions to problems to give students options for how they might approach solving problems. He says that the students are his life, and that both Ellerby and the students benefit from this approach.

“That comes directly from Frank, because that’s the way he taught and the way he trained me when we were teaching chemistry and physics,” says Ellerby. The same heirloom lessons, honed and refined throughout Andrews and Ellerby’s lifetimes, are now being passed on to new generations of students. Perhaps a few will feel the need to teach and, in their time, win their own Outstanding Teaching Award.