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CLARKSTON, Ga--Never underestimate the power of a good teacher.
For Cole Fellow award winner and chemistry professor Michael Nelson, it was a chemistry teacher in high school who changed the course of his life.
“When I was younger, I loved drawing and would have considered myself more artsy—I hated math and loved art class. I wanted to be an architect,” he said.
It was his 10th-grade chemistry teacher that gave him the tools for his future profession, he said.
“Ms. Clarice Wenz made the subject so interesting and there were lots of problems to solve, and it seemed as if chemistry answered a lot of questions about how things work,” he said.
Nelson ended up taking more advanced chemistry courses with Wenz through high school and excelled in the subject. During a regional high school science fair competition at the College of Charleston, he was also introduced to another mentor, Dr. W. Frank Kinard, who encouraged him to continue in the discipline.
Kinard became his advisor while he was an undergraduate at the College of Charleston. “I give credit to both Ms. Wenz and Dr. Kinard for inspiring me to study chemistry,” he said.
While he enjoyed mentoring other students in the physical sciences in college, teaching as a career wasn’t really on his mind—at first, he said.
“I didn't really consider pursuing teaching as a career until I went to graduate school at the Georgia Institute of Technology,” he said.
“As I earned my Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry, I was required to become a teaching assistant. It was during this time that I grew to love teaching. I got to teach a variety of chemistry labs at Georgia Tech, including General Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry and Physical Chemistry – I especially loved teaching the Physical Chemistry labs.
After receiving his Ph.D., Nelson was offered teaching positions at the College of Charleston and Trident Technical College in Charleston, S.C., but turned both jobs down. “I wanted to see what industry had to offer,” he said.
He worked for the Environmental Protection Agency performing wastewater analysis; did pharmaceutical research and was a manager of an analysis lab in the microelectronics industry.
While working the full-time day job at the microelectronics company, he began teaching part-time during the evenings at the Dunwoody Campus. His love for teaching was reignited.
Then his “full-time” job announced that it was closing its Norcross office, Nelson was offered the same position in Boston.
He struggled. He loved teaching but was unsure of the stability of the part-time teaching position at the college—and the move to Boston meant a lot more money.
“As luck would have it, a limited-term position opened up at the college’s (former) Lawrenceville Campus,” he said.
He turned down the Boston job.
“I really didn’t want to move to Boston,” he said. He accepted the chemistry term-to-term teaching job. That was 17 years ago, and he has never looked back to the corporate world. Today he is a professor of chemistry.
For the past 11 years, Nelson has been a leader in physical sciences. “I have been an Interim Department Chair, a Department Chair or Associate Department Chair for the last 10 years, and I have been the Chair of the Chemistry Curriculum Committee, he said.
Like his high school and college mentors, Nelson finds that engaging and getting students excited to learn are the most gratifying aspects of his work—and the most challenging.
“Chemistry is a very scary subject to some and can be very intimidating,” he said. “Many students come through the door thinking chemistry is too difficult, and they aren't really interested in it," Nelson said. " I believe it is my responsibility as an instructor to engage every single student in my classes. I want every single student to get excited about learning chemistry and ask questions and engage in discussion both inside and outside the classroom. Taking these students and inspiring them to ask questions beyond the scope of the class and have the desire to learn chemistry on a much deeper level and want to know how chemistry connects to other disciplines and to their everyday lives keeps me motivated.”
The Cole Fellow, named in honor of Dr. Marvin Cole, president of both DeKalb College/Georgia Perimeter College from 1981-1993, is the highest college honor for a Perimeter faculty member to receive.
“I still can't believe I am an actual Cole Fellow,” said Nelson. It is truly an honor to represent Perimeter College and all Perimeter College faculty who are dedicated to engaging and inspiring students.”