Interactive learning helps students succeed at USU
Owl pellets and scuba diving usually don’t apply to every major, but in Robert Schmidt’s class, living with wildlife, students will learn about both.
Schmidt is a lecturer, academic adviser and service learning coordinator who has been helping students expand their thoughts by taking an innovative approach to teaching and advising.
“I ask students, ‘What is it that you want to do with your life?'” Schmidt said. “The goal isn’t the degree. The goal is to have a happy, successful life.”
The class he teaches currently is a depth credit that attracts every major and because of that, Schmidt said he tries to apply lessons about wildlife that everyone can use.
“In five years from now, when the students have forgotten all about me and my class, I want them to remember how the issues can be relevant to them,” he said.
To help his students have a more interactive and applicable curriculum, Schmidt uses hands-on learning experiences such as dissecting owl pellets, going scuba diving and even having guest lectures like one he will have next week to speak about Sasquatch.
“Students may not realize it, but I try and get them to think about science throughout the class and how it applies to each student personally,” Schmidt said.
Annie Love, sophomore in elementary education, said Schmidt is an easygoing professor that uses props, visual displays and even animals to keep the students interested.
“It’s interesting because he’s way excited,” Love said. “You can tell he really loves his work.”
Schmidt is also an academic adviser who tries to learn from the students and understand what it’s like to be a student now, he said. Each year he tries to audit at least one class so that when he is advising students on what classes to take, he is able to tell them what it is really like and how the professor really is.
“I try to speak the students’ language,” he said. “I love learning from the students.”
Schmidt is extensively involved in wildlife research and has had positions at a variety of campuses, including University of California, Berkeley, and has won several awards, including student adviser of the year for the College of Natural Resources for three years.
Schmidt is also involved in the Women and Gender Studies Program on campus, because the fields of wildlife studies and forestry professionals were so male-dominated, yet roughly half the students going into those fields are females, he said. Also, females have a different viewpoint and can strengthen the field, Schmidt said, and there needs to be more gender equality in the forestry fields.
“On average, wildlife views are changing, but they are changing very slowly,” Schmidt said.
–seth.bracken@aggiemail.usu.edu