For 45 years, professor makes science cool
After more than 45 years experience teaching physics, there is only one thing W. Farrell Edwards said he would change about first starting out as a teacher.
“I probably would say don’t be quite so serious,” Edwards, a Logan native, said. “I had plenty of fun. But, have I really changed? I think I am pretty happy with who I was.”
After all his years of teaching, Edwards said he still thinks science is fun and he has never regretted coming to Utah State University and teaching. He said his desire to become a teacher has “pretty well always been there.”
He said in science, physics especially, there are two groups of people. Those who, when they are young, think they have a product that will do the world good. They become engineers so they can do something. Edwards said he falls into the second category.
“If you don’t think you can make a product that will do the world any good, then you become a teacher at a university,” he said.
Edwards teaches in the physics department at USU and throughout his career he has had many different positions of authority. From department head to being in charge of general education, Edwards, the father of 10 children, brings a lot of experience to the classroom.
And, he said one of the greatest things a teacher can do is make the students realize that learning is fun – that science is fun.
Far too often, Edwards said some professors get too caught up in impressing students with how smart they are. But that isn’t how it should be.
“I respect the teacher that makes it fun,” he said. “I always get student evaluations that say ‘I wouldn’t have dreamed science could be that fun.’ That’s when I say ‘all right … finally, after all these years I did my job.'”
The best classes for Edwards are the ones with 150 students and no one is falling asleep or talking in the back rows. Or, he said he also likes the classes with only eight students who ask questions and challenge him.
But, he said, teaching isn’t always going to be fun. Throughout his career, he said he has had some hard classes and lectures as well as some absolutely “terrific” ones. He said he has realized everything can always change.
One class Edwards taught, which he said illustrates that idea, was an introductory physics class several years ago.
The first year he taught the year-long course, he said it was a good experience for both students and professor.
“They nominated me for professor of the year and I became the College of Science Professor of the Year,” he said. “Hooray, how exciting.”
“The next year, in the same class, I decided to make some changes in my technique.”
It didn’t go over so well.
Edwards said about five months into the class, it just wasn’t going right – something was wrong.
He said one of his neighbors was in his class and Edwards asked if he could talk to him and ask what he was doing wrong. Edwards told him that only a year before in the same class he had been the professor of the year.
He said the student looked at him and said, “You’re kidding.”
“I had gone from a hero to a bum,” Edwards said.
After talking some more with the student, he realized what he was doing wrong, made some changes and managed to salvage the course. The next year he said he taught the same course and had things back together.
He was named the USU Professor of the Year.
“How do you go from being a hero to a bum and back to being a hero in three short years?” he asked. “It’s a profession where you better not rest easy. You better work at it and you better realize that the honors one gets are elusive and [you can’t] take it too seriously.”
The best honor, in Edwards’ opinion, is simply having a student say physics is cool.
And for Edwards, physics is cool.
“I think the requirement for liking physics is a word with four letters. It’s spelled n-e-r-d,” he said.
The real excitement in life comes from not knowing, then questioning and making little discoveries and finally beginning to get an understanding, he said.
“I would ten times more not know something and try to fathom it out, than have all this boring stuff presented to you and get all this great knoweledge and information. No, that’s not for me,” Edwards said.
Questioning everything is something that is very important to Edwards. He said that’s the reason he has trouble with naming people as heroes.
Aside from his wife, Edwards said he has never put anybody on a pedastal and worshipped them.
“How many people make [Albert] Einstein their hero? That he’s perfect, his personal life is perfect,” Edwards said. “His personal life left much to be desired. His science was terrific, but was it good enough to just bow before it. I’d rather question it.”
Hanging on the wall of his office, Edwards has five drawings of scientists. Not because they are his heroes, he said, but because Einstein and James Maxwell are in his field of study.
But he said he isn’t willing to take everything they say as science doctrine.
“In a way I guess I like Maxwell as a human being the best. He loved children. He was a great thinker and extremely influential,” he said.
In Edwards’ opinion, Einstein was a “marvelous thinker” but Edwards said he has struggled with him. Also, [Isaac] Newton, whose theories are the foundation of most of science, was a very strange man, Edwards said.
“So I can’t name someone I’ve ever had up that high,” he said. “Higher than me by all means. But to the point where I want to be like them … well if being like them means questioning everything, then yeah.”
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu
Physics Professor Farrell Edwards teaches a Quantum Mechanics II class Tuesday morning. Edwards has been teaching at USU for more than 45 years. (Photo by Ryan Talbot)