Michael Gray
Mike is a recent Professor Emeritus “retired” after nearly 45 years as a full-time faculty member in higher education. His teaching career started in 1971 in Virginia where he taught secondary science courses. He received a PhD from Clemson University in microbiology in 1978 and began full-time university teaching the same year. He has taught over 10,000 students in his career in courses ranging from first year through graduate school and for non-majors as well as majors.
Mike has created a number of ground-breaking university courses over his career including in-person Socratic Discussion courses, case-based hybrid courses, and investigative lab courses.
In 1992 Mike was selected by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) as a member of one of 20 national scientist educator teams (SET). This program paired an accomplished teacher with an accomplished researcher to encourage collaborations that would improve the teaching of the researcher and the research of the teacher.
As a result of the SET program, Mike was able from 1994-1999 to influence the pedagogy of a new cell biology book which was being developed. Mike was acknowledged in the first edition. This book has since become a perennial best-seller and is often called “the gold standard textbook.”
Beginning in the early 1990’s Mike and a few other science faculty began brainstorming ideas to produce longer lasting learning in their students. This became, in 2004, the Summer Institute in Teaching Science (SITS). SITS began very modestly, mostly as an informal “think tank.” By 2008 the three founding faculty had developed a program that consisted of three tracks, each one ten weeks long. The tracks simultaneously developed faculty thinking about teaching as well as innovative individual course curricula that would engage students in deep learning.
Convinced that the approach to teaching and learning they had arrived at in SITS was not science specific, the three founding faculty launched the Excellence in Teaching Initiative (EITI) in 2009 and over the next five years they taught a three week program to over 100 non-science university faculty from dozens of different disciplines ranging from trumpet performance to history.
In 2016 Mike published Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning. This book is written especially (but not exclusively) for teachers in all areas of higher-education. It is a unique combination of theory and practice that centers on uncovering and using the core principles of each academic discipline.
Mike is a frequent speaker on teaching and learning in venues such as Leadership in Higher Education, The Teaching Professor Conference, and the Transformative Learning Conference.