Great Teacher Award

For math’s Zitarelli, it’s all about the access

Zitarelli

Four years ago, 2005 Great Teacher Award recipient David E. Zitarelli was honored for his work in the classroom. He'll tell you that his teaching is no different now than it was then — but Temple is.

“Temple University has changed quite a bit since four years ago,” said Zitarelli, an associate professor of mathematics who received a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2001. “We can meet with students outside of class a lot more than we used to be able to do. I was able to see it coming when I was part of the Honors program four years ago, but I had no idea it would carry over to the whole student population.”

Zitarelli attributes this newfound access to his students outside of class to the growth in Temple's student resident population.

“Having so many students now living on campus means that on a lot of afternoons, I'll have a student coming to see me for help or with questions between 3 and 4 o’clock and another between 4 and 5,” he said. “We never used to have that.

“Also, with the old Temple, you could never do anything in the evening because the commuters didn't want to come back to campus,” he added. “I'm now actually able to spend more time teaching because of the access I have to students outside the classroom.”

Zitarelli is able to do things for his class like hold evening review sessions for exams, as he did recently, even buying pizzas for his students.

“It was kind of nice,” said Zitarelli, who has made it his hallmark throughout his 35 years at Temple to try different things to get his students independently engaged in the learning process. “We got together to review for a test, but we did it over pizza. And I think that helps to break down the barriers when you're trying to communicate with your students.”

Another way Zitarelli, or “Dr. Z” as he is affectionately known around campus, tries to communicate with his students is through humor.

“Yeah, humor is kind of a part of me,” he admitted with a laugh. “Quite a bit of it is planned, but I try to make it seem like it's off the cuff.”

That's why he listens to radio stations that play music he detests, so he can mis-reference a singer or lyrics to a rap song as a joke for his students.

“They think it's funny that a 60-year-old guy knows these rap singers and songs, then misquotes them,” he said with a chuckle. Like the time he purposely misidentified the singer Usher, repeatedly referring to him in class as “Ulcer.”

“The students were like, ‘What is he talking about?’” Zitarelli recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ And they all yelled, ‘No, no, no ... that's Usher!’ Well, I knew it was Usher.

“I'm not going to quit my day job; one needs to know their strengths and weaknesses,” he said of his use of humor. “But if the students don't open their textbook to do the math problems, it doesn't matter how great my lecture is. Learning is not going to take place.”

Zitarelli, who is the fourth member of the mathematics faculty to receive the Great Teacher Award (joining colleagues Raymond Coughlin, Orin Chein and David Hill), said the recognition by his peers is “gratifying.”

During his 3 1/2 decades at Temple, Zitarelli has been actively involved in many aspects of academic life at the University, including developing innovative curriculum materials, conducting research, serving in administrative posts and, of course, teaching.

In the early 1980s, the Springfield, Delaware County, resident was asked to develop course materials for the College of Liberal Arts' new core curriculum. Collaborating with Coughlin, the two produced a series of 12 textbooks over the next decade.

Zitarelli later teamed with Hill, receiving a National Science Foundation grant to develop a first-of-its-kind computer lab for a mathematics course. That math lab, which began with 35 computers, today has more than 200 units, and the curriculum they developed for its use has become a national model.

A native of Chester who earned his bachelor's degree from Temple in 1963, Zitarelli's work with the Honors program led him to be named Honors Professor of the Year in 2001.

And through it all, Zitarelli has employed a caring attitude mixed with a little humor — or whatever else it takes to engage the students.

Like traveling with the women's softball team to Florida over spring break or inviting his class to join him at a dance recital in the Conwell Dance Theater for a fellow student, “just to support them in other endeavors so that hopefully, they'll support me in doing their math.”

- By Preston M. Moretz