Star teacher takes a different approach to chemistry

In the well of the lecture hall, Cathy Middlecamp begins Chemistry 108, Chemistry in Context, with some encouragement: “This was your first exam, but you knocked it out of the park.” Before easing into the day’s topic, she tells a story showing that science is no stranger to real life.

It’s a couple of months after Sept. 11, and she is returning from a tour of “uranium country” in New Mexico with Omie Baldwin, a member of the Navajo nation and social worker at University Health Services. The women are exploring an old uranium mine and mill where Navajo men had worked and later contracted lung cancer from exposure to the radioactive gas radon in the mines, which supplied the U.S. atomic bomb project.

As Middlecamp boards her return flight, she rolls a carry-on bag — freighted with uranium ore she collected — down the jetway. Middlecamp reminds the class that the decay of uranium releases, “What? Right, alpha particles.” A sheet of paper can block alpha particles, so she’s not worried about airport radiation monitors — until the intercom barks, “Passenger Middlecamp: Halt! Your boarding has been denied by the FAA.”

Repeating “uranium is an alpha emitter,” on her internal soundtrack, Middlecamp returns to the desk — and learns that radiation is not the problem — she has too many carry-ons.

By the time she gets to the day’s subject, ground-level ozone pollution, Middlecamp has subtly delivered a stack of lessons about the relationship of science and society: Knowing science has practical value. The past is still with us. It’s legit to care about people — even miners who have long since succumbed to their hazardous national-security service.

And science, like literature, is about stories.

The lecture on ozone pollution concludes with some science-based health advice: because ground-level ozone forms in sunlight, in summer it’s safest to exercise in the morning.

The students may not know that their instructor once considered becoming a gym teacher. Growing up on Long Island, N.Y., Middlecamp won the school’s athletic award and was first in her class — a dualism that continues today. Middlecamp, a distinguished faculty associate in the chemistry department and Integrated Liberal Studies, also teaches the Japanese martial art of aikido at Aikido of Madison on Madison’s east side.

“In my world growing up,” she says, “women were teachers or nurses, and I always thought I’d be teaching something.” After getting a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Cornell, Middlecamp earned one of 100 Danforth Fellowships, which helped fund graduate studies for students who intended to teach. She earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at UW–Madison in 1976, and taught in programs designed to enhance minority and nontraditional students. In 1979, she began assisting at the Chemistry Learning Center, a campus group devoted to helping chemistry students master the subject. As the center’s director since 1988, she has written academic and attitudinal tips for learning, even enjoying, chemistry.

Personal engagement is a key to the Middlecamp method. She is “a very high-touch professor, she’s engaging, looking for ways to get them involved in their own learning through group projects, research and labs,” says Aaron Brower, a professor of social work and vice provost for teaching and learning. “She works very hard at teaching; it’s a real priority, a labor of love, and it really shows.”

Middlecamp, a fellow of the Association for Women in Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Chemical Society, is married to Ralph Middlecamp, who is the executive of the Madison St. Vincent de Paul Society. In 1997, at age 14, John, their only child, died of leukemia, but she puts the enduring pain to good use. “Sometimes I think I’m a pathological optimist. How do you go on after you lose a kid? You make everybody your kid.”

“As a mentor, Cathy is priceless,” says Teri Larson, a Ph.D. student in curriculum and instruction who began working as a teaching assistant with Middlecamp more than 10 years ago. “She’s always looking out for the best interests of whoever she takes under her wing. She does a good job of seeking opportunities for them. I published my first paper because of her, spoke at my first national conference because of her.”

Middlecamp’s many teaching awards include a UW System Teaching Scholar award. This fall, she was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa award. “Nothing tickles me more,” she says, “because the award is from the students, and because Phi Beta Kappa recognizes interdisciplinary scholarship.”

Behind the master teacher is a rebel who says she “teaches science as if people mattered.” In her course Integrated Liberal Studies 251, students read “The Radium Girls and the Firecracker Boys,” about the young women who died of oral cancer after they painted luminescent radium on watch dials in the 1920s, and about atomic scientists who proposed to use nuclear explosives to open a harbor in Alaska in the 1950s.

These almost-forgotten stories of exploitation and hubris show the trademark Middlecamp approach, notes Edwin Sibert III, chair of the general chemistry division (which serves non-science majors). “She teaches chemistry by choosing topics that students care about, by showing the role of chemistry in these topics, and then highlighting how an understanding of the underlying chemical principles allows us to implement smart changes that affect all of our lives.”

The larger world and its problems are in the foreground as Middlecamp describes her role as a teacher and mentor. “How do you go on when the planet has these problems? You try to take care of them one at a time, but you can’t think too small. In science, the answers aren’t all in the back of the book.”

In a research institution, Middlecamp is defiantly focused on teaching. “Because of who I am, I love teaching, students, learning from them. I cannot stay with balancing equations,” she says. “I tell students my goals are ‘for you to learn chemistry and to enjoy learning chemistry, so when you leave the course, you will continue learning on your own. I am only with you for five months, and I want you to engage, enjoy, find it worth your time.’”