Clark Lindgren Honored

Clark Lindgren, Patricia A. Johnson Professor of Neuroscience and professor of biology, has been selected as the Iowa Professor of the Year of 2015. A member of the faculty since 1992, Lindgren has strived to help students from groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences overcome external challenges and find success in scientific fields.

Lindgren says, “For each student I try to be appropriately demanding and yet encouraging at the same time, and that to me is really the essence of what good teaching is about — finding that balance.”

He is a pioneer of engaging, authentic, and interdisciplinary biology teaching methods. He was a co-architect of the upside-down biology curriculum, in which students are immersed in research from their first biology course. Now emulated across the country, Biology 150 is, according to a colleague and nominator, “an important transition from faculty-centered teaching to student-centered learning.”