Metcalf Winner Templer Brings Science to Life

Pamela Templer inspires students in the classroom and in the field. The CAS associate professor of biology has won one of this year’s Metcalf Awards. Photo by Melody Komyerov

A gifted pianist who changed majors after falling in love with ecology in an undergraduate course, Pamela Templer inspires her students to be attuned to the harmony and dissonance found in nature. Whether they’re in a lecture, measuring snow depths in the north woods, digging soil samples in the Harvard Forest, or testing the air from a BU rooftop, Templer’s students learn the rigorous science of the world that embraces them. As winner of one of this year’s Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching, the College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of biology is being recognized for bringing science to life and grooming undergraduate and graduate researchers to take on the urgent challenges of climate change, applying what they’ve learned to solving real-world problems.

In one of Templer’s studies, examining the effects of changing snowfall levels on tree growth and nutrients in the soil carpeting the forest floor, she took teams of graduate and undergraduate students to the experimental Harvard Forest, where they hooked syringe needles and sap flow sensors to trees, and gathered soil samples to measure things from nutrient levels to microbial and insect life. In another study, she and a group of students dug deep trenches in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest to lay a network of cables that would measure changes in emissions of the greenhouse gases affecting climate change.

Teaching popular classes such as Forest Ecology and Biology of Global Change, she avails herself of a tool always there for the taking—the world outside. Her gifts as a field guide complement an ability to engage and inspire students with lectures laced with environment-related stories ripped from the headlines. “My goal is to prepare them to read the news objectively,” says Templer, who graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz and earned a doctorate from Cornell University. “In all my courses, participation is a top priority. I was a quiet student, so I try to get everybody to speak. I’ll encourage students to send me links to websites, and I’ll make a slide and incorporate those into my lectures so we can all discuss it. One of my favorite things is after the semester, when they keep sending me things.”

“I’m not at all surprised that Professor Templer has won this prestigious teaching award,” says Virginia Sapiro, outgoing dean of Arts & Sciences. “She has long been known as a superb teacher and mentor; I’ve heard her lecture and thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot. And she is a first-class scholar.”

Templer also helps her students develop the writing skills they’ll need to communicate their results to laypeople and to secure grants. She is the faculty sponsor for the student group Advocacy for Literacy in Environmental Science, which received a BU Student Activities Award for its efforts in outreach and educating the public. She also mentors high school students as well as undergraduates in the lab.

“I find it a thrill to teach budding scientists and expand their minds to the wonders of environmental science,” Templer says, “and hopefully help produce leaders in my field.”

Her nominator attributes Templer’s popularity and success to “her contagious enthusiasm for science, her ability to establish a classroom environment that…fosters a free exchange of ideas, and her genuine commitment to addressing the needs of individual students.” As one student remarked, “How can you not like Professor Templer?”

Templer knows the names of each of her students and engages them individually in discussions, addressing them by name and asking questions, a nominating committee member observed. “The students were very responsive and comfortable with this teaching style. It is clear that Templer creates a relaxed atmosphere in the classroom and optimizes the ability of the students to perform up to their potential.”

“Professor Templer is approachable, engaging, and always willing to help,” says former student Jonathan Toll (CAS’12), now an environmental project manager for the New York Botanical Garden. “She is an amazing mentor who guided me through my own undergraduate research, from start to publishing a paper. She enriched my academic journey at BU and helped me become both a better student and a better individual. We still chat, and she has provided me with valuable insight and advice for my future endeavors.”

Her classes draw students from other colleges, including the College of Communication, the School of Law, and even the Metropolitan College Evergreen Program, which allows those 58 or older to audit BU courses. Although students come to class with different levels of scientific background, Templer makes the classes work for everyone. And if they need extra help or have a problem, she is happily accessible. “I enjoy office hours and I know it makes a difference,” she says. “I try to treat students the way I’d want professors to treat my own kid.”

Associate chair of the biology department since 2014, Templer came to BU in 2005. She is also director of the University’s PhD Certificate Program in Biogeosciences.

The Metcalf Cup and Prize and the Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching, created in 1973 and presented at Commencement, are funded by a gift from the late Arthur G. B. Metcalf (SED’35, Hon.’74), a BU Board of Trustees chair emeritus and former professor. The Metcalf Cup and Prize winner receives $10,000 and the Metcalf Award winners receive $5,000 each. A University committee selects winners based on statements of nominees’ teaching philosophy, supporting letters from colleagues and students, and classroom observation.

This year’s other Metcalf Award winner is Binyomin Abrams, a College of Arts & Sciences senior lecturer in chemistry. The 2015 Metcalf Cup and Prize winner is Janice Furlong, a School of Social Work clinical associate professor of clinical practice and human behavior.

More information about Commencement can be found here.