 |
| Graduate student Heather Robbins takes the seat of honour in Tom MacRae's office.(Danny Abriel Photo) |
The old wooden rocking chair in Tom MacRae’s office has a tall back, worn arms and a slippery seat. When you sit in it, talking to the smiling, somewhat shy man opposite you, you can’t help but rock and relax a little.
The Dalhousie biology professor and department chair bought the chair more than 30 years ago for his wife Cheryl when she was expecting the first of their two children. It has soothed sleeping babies in the middle of the night, and later when Cheryl ran a daycare centre out of their Halifax home, acted as an oasis of calm in the middle of chaos.
When the rocker was no longer needed at home, Dr. MacRae rescued it from the basement and brought it to his office in the Life Sciences Centre. Students seem to gravitate to it and Dr. MacRae’s reassuring, gentle presence.
“It’s a homey thing,” says Dr. MacRae, 59. “The students like it, they relax, and we can get to the root of their problem.”
Dr. MacRae is as effective with large groups of students as he is one on one. He’s just been awarded Dalhousie’s top teaching prize, the Dalhousie Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award was announced at a reception for the 12th Dalhousie Conference on Learning and Teaching last Wednesday.
It’s one of many honours: he’s also won the Rosemary Gill Award for service to students, the national 3M Teaching Fellowship and Faculty of Science Award for Excellence in Teaching, among others.
Third-year student James Brunt describes his teaching as “quite simply beautiful.” Alyssa Byers-Heinlein, also in third year, says he’s inspirational.
“When I started my second year as a biology student, I was sure I wanted nothing to do with cells, but I can honestly say the BIOL 2020 changed my mind,” she wrote in a letter nominating Dr. MacRae for the award. “(Now), I’m doing an honours thesis on a similar subject matter.”
Over his 28-year teaching career at Dalhousie, he’s taught hundreds of Dalhousie students, in bursting-to-the-seams introductory classes (at one time held in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium) to much smaller classes with just 10 or 15 senior students. He also has a team of six students who collaborate with him on his research.
“I really care about teaching and I really like being around students,” says Dr. MacRae. “I can’t say I was a stellar student myself and I haven’t forgotten some of the problems I had and what a difference it made when my professors had time for me.”