Earlier last semester, a portion of the over 2,000 students enrolled in CHEM 130 General Chemistry packed into a lecture hall for the first day of class. As CHEM 130 is a required course for dozens of undergraduate degrees, the room was filled with students from different disciplines and colleges. For many, this was their first experience with a university-level chemistry course or maybe even chemistry as a subject.
They were greeted by Dr. Alex Poniatowski, a lecturer in the chemistry department since 2014. This was not his first time teaching CHEM 130, but it was his first class as a new Teaching Professor. Poniatowski is the first lecturer in the department to earn the working title of Teaching Professor since the title was established in 2021. Included in the collective bargaining agreement between the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (LEO) and the University of Michigan, Dr. Cindee Giffen, a Teaching Professor in the Comprehensive Studies Program and President of LEO, said the Teaching Professor title is meant to “reward expertise, achievement, and quality teaching.”
In Poniatowski’s case, these qualities were evident in the many ways he has positively impacted the chemistry department, said department chair Dr. Bart Bartlett. “It's clear he's enthusiastic about chemistry, but he's also enthusiastic about chemists.”
One example included in Poniatowski’s nomination was his work in building a mentoring network to continue training new lecturers, which was a driving force behind a shift in the department’s instructional culture. Bartlett described how when Poniatowski started in the department, it was typical for lecturers to teach the same course annually. Now, it is common for lecturers to rotate through courses each year with support from colleagues who previously taught the same class, helping develop the curriculum for large courses through instructors sharing their experiences.
These mentoring relationships cultivate a network of educators, something that Poniatowski values in his own teaching. “I think it’s really important to stay connected in your learning community,” he said, “and that can be in your department, it could be in your city, it can be in your discipline…it’s very grounding.”
Poniatowski said that this contributes to the “esprit de corps” of the department when it comes to teaching. Especially in large courses with multiple instructors, he’s “very careful to say [the class] is not ours, it’s just our turn” and that when a different lecturer leads the course in a different semester, they “need to be encouraged and supported too.”
Poniatowski attended University of Michigan, graduating with his B.S. in chemistry in 2003. He worked as an undergraduate instructor with Dr. Brian Coppola, which he said helped prepare him for graduate school by encouraging him to think about teaching in a professional context. After completing his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2009, Poniatowski was considering what to do next but was not enthusiastic about pursuing a post-doctoral research position. Instead, he followed advice from a friend that he didn’t have to follow a typical career progression and could do what he loved.
“She just said, ‘Alex if everything, all signs from within and without are pointing you to not do something, you should probably not do that,’” Poniatowski recalled. “I can just figure it out, and for me [the thing I love] was teaching.”
He lectured at three different colleges in the Pittsburgh area, commuting between the campuses. He moved to the University of Michigan Dearborn in 2013, also lecturing at Marygrove College, then returned to Ann Arbor in 2014.
“It was a really interesting collection of experiences, working with very different campuses with their very different missions,” he said. “It was great to get to meet so many students from so many different backgrounds and so many different trajectories.”
Poniatowski said he is driven by learning new things and pursuing new experiences. Teaching encourages him to always think about new perspectives and share his passion for what he teaches.
“I use words to communicate chemistry to people who love it and hate it and everything in between, and that's graduate students, undergraduates, peers, colleagues…and I get money?” he joked. “It's just the most charmed existence when I stop and think about it.”
This enthusiasm carries over into Poniatowski’s work advising undergraduate students, another contribution to the department Bartlett said was highlighted in his nomination for the Teaching Professor title. Poniatowski is deeply appreciative of the opportunity to introduce students to chemistry for the first time in introductory classes and nurture their growth in the field. Many students who take part in his classes also continue to pursue different disciplines besides chemistry, something that motivates his approach in the classroom.
“If you want to check out what chemistry’s about, we want to give you the real deal. And if it's not for you, that's cool; but if it is for you, let's keep going.”
Bartlett said the final piece of Poniatowski’s nomination was his efforts developing graduate student instructors (GSIs) in the department. This has included contributing to the GSI training that all first-year graduate students participate in as well as mentoring GSIs assigned to the courses he leads.
“One of the things like right out of the gate that Alex helped with was instilling a confidence in the younger GSIs,” said Will Kidder, a third-year graduate student who was a GSI for CHEM 125 General Chemistry Laboratory his first year. “He empowered us to develop our teaching style and also to kind of learn on the job.”
Kidder also explained that Poniatowski used GSI staff meetings as an opportunity for open discussion, inviting graduate students to share experiences and strategies they could put into practice during lab sessions with students.
“He taught by example,” Kidder said, “and I think that his teaching style was pretty inspiring for me in the development of my own ability to communicate complex information.”
“I'm excited for Alex,” said Giffen, who explained that the nomination process for the title of Teaching Professor is tied to lecturers’ periodic reviews outlined in the LEO contract. Bartlett said the criteria considered in these evaluations for lecturers, including student feedback, is consistent between lecturers and research faculty to ensure quality instruction across all courses. He thinks the title is a positive step towards departmental unity, a sentiment shared by Giffen who noted that it served an important role in addressing misconceptions that there is a divide between lecturers and tenure-track faculty.
“Everyone knows what professor means as a word,” said Bartlett. “I think it is better recognition for the contributions [lecturers] make.”
Both he and Poniatowski expressed excitement that more department members will achieve the title in the future and join Poniatowski as Teaching Professors of Chemistry. Poniatowski said earning the title meant a lot to him and that he valued feedback in all forms throughout his career. He also said it was an honor to be recognized by his colleagues at all levels of the department for pursuing his passion.
Said Poinatowski, “I just took that old advice, just keep doing what you love and keep doing what you’re good at.”
