Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award, May 2002

From the Commencement Program:

Dr. Alex Jonathan Roche’s teaching strategy is to create a “rapport with the students” that “helps create a forum free of inhibition, which is necessary for effective discussion and understanding.” He says that he tries “to make lectures, especially the recitations, as informal and as much fun as possible.” He adopted his philosophy from Charles Dickens who wrote in Hard Times: “People must be amused. They can’t always be a learning; Nor yet they can’t always be a working.” Both his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in Chemistry were obtained from the University of Durham, U.K. His students describe him as possessing the “ability to instruct many students of varying abilities and backgrounds,” and they “feel he has an open door policy.” Additionally he “instills a love for chemistry in students” and “uses original techniques to facilitate student learning.”