Don Visco, associate professor of Chemical Engineering, captured two of the College of Engineering's most prestigious annual awards this year because his students are convinced he cares about their academic success and will use innovative methods, including a popular game show response system, to help them learn.

Don Visco

Visco is the first faculty member to receive the Leighton E. Sissom Innovation and Creativity Award as well as the Brown-Henderson Outstanding Engineering Faculty Award. The double honor is for the volume and quality of his work guiding CHE majors to answers about their interests, capabilities and expectations.

"I ask students, 'Why do you want to be a chemical engineer?' and they say, 'I like chemistry, and I'm good in math,'" says Visco, who is the first contact a potential TTU Chemical Engineering student meets to talk about the future. But few of them know what a chemical engineer actually does."

To cultivate the students' intrinsic interest in science and engineering that brought them to TTU in the first place, Visco, with the help of his colleagues, created an introductory course to the major. Students perform simple, hands-on experiments that relate to a chemical engineering concept they will see later on in their curriculum. Students help design the course content by letting Visco know what they wish they knew about their major.

Visco's students are especially complimentary of his style, which includes using a Classroom Response System, or "clicker," to allow students to answer questions at the beginning of each class. His innovations are often simple plans to personalize his students' experiences and develop trust with them. He provides a personal biography in the syllabus and asks, as a first assignment, for the students to turn one in to him. He takes digital photographs to help him remember students' names. He offers a recitation, or review, session each week designed to help students feel comfortable asking questions. He has students pick up the first exam in his office because professor's offices can be seen as intimidating, and students will avoid going there if possible.

"There is not a single instance where I remember him quitting on someone who was not able to understand an issue, regardless of it being academic or non-academic," says Barath Baburao, who was mentored as a master's student by Visco.

Other innovations include a workshop to help new engineering faculty who are adept in research become more familiar with what works in classroom teaching. Visco also developed a mentoring system for his graduate students that allows them to teach and then evaluate themselves on a regular basis.

"It is hard for me to imagine a more intellectually gifted faculty member, or a more innovative caring professor," says former Chemical Engineering major Christina Payne, who is now a Vanderbilt graduate student.

Dean Glen Johnson says Visco's double nomination reflects a special combination of talent and commitment to teaching and innovation.

"It is unprecedented for the same professor to win these two awards in the same year, but different committees reviewed different nominations, and Dr. Visco's work stood out for both awards," says Johnson. "This is a testimony to the very high quality of his work."

The Sissom Award honors former Dean Leighton E. Sissom and recognizes scholarship, methodology, invention, technique and other contributions in the college. The Brown-Henderson Award honors outstanding performance in teaching and research or service and carries the names of Engineering Dean Emeritus James Seay Brown and James Henderson, the college's first dean.