What's Their Secret

By Seong Jong Hong     9/21/11 7:00pm

If you ever see two young students biking with a professor, you might stare quizzically at first; after all, this is a rare sight. If you knew Electrical Engineering Professor Don Johnson, though, such a sight wouldn't come as a surprise.

As the lecturer for ELEC 241: Intro to Electrical Engineering course, Don Johnson shares his passion for the subject.

"First of all, I enjoy doing it ... turns out I invented the introductory course several years ago," Johnson explained on why he is still teaching as a professor emeritus, which means that he has retired but still teaches at Rice University. "I love teaching [ELEC 241] and I know how it is structured, so they wanted me to come and teach it for as long as I can."

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Many students enjoy how Johnson teaches, as evidenced by the course reviews from the fall of 2010.

Not only do most comments praise his intellectual capabilities and sense of humor, but also the statistics show that his students like him: 75 percent of the reviews rated him as "Outstanding" in his overall effectiveness as a teacher.

Johnson said he tried to pique interest and raise participation by using a method he had conceived during his many years at Rice.

"To keep it from being a dead class, I try not to just stand up there and talk and write things at the board; I've developed this course over the years," he said. "The thing about the pizza questions is, this isn't a small class: it's about 50 [students] or so. If I ask directly, no one will want to raise their hand because they might think that they're stupid."

Therefore, he offers pizza slices to anyone who can offer up the correct response to his lecture questions, and then gives out pizza at the end of the semester.

Of course, he doesn't simply lecture about just the science: he likes to provide a background to the important figures behind the crucial discoveries, to show that this doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Johnson not only bonds with the students in the classroom, but also shares personal connections with them outside the halls. He rides a bike to and from the campus to commute, but two students from his course last year will often join him in his daily bike rides.

Perhaps why his students love him so much is because of how he forms personal bonds with the students and reaches out to them.

 "What's Their Secret?" is a weekly feature that highlights a faculty member who has had a significant impact on Rice students.

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