Teaching the Large College Class
A Guidebook for Instructors with Multitudes--by Frank Heppner
A Guidebook for Instructors with Multitudes--by Frank Heppner
A Guidebook for Instructors with Multitudes-by Frank Heppner
Author Biography
Frank Heppner is a fourth-generation Californian, and was born in San Francisco sometime before World War II. He represents the intersection of two family lines; one of adventurers, the other of scholars. His maternal line had many gold miners--six of his ancestors were blown
up in mine accidents, and one was unfortunately, ah, taken, by headhunters in South America. His father and his two brothers shared three M.D. degrees and a Ph.D among them.
Heppner has been teaching science for a long time. He still has his first lesson plan on reptiles, prepared when he was 11, and received his first student evaluation of teaching when he was 12.
He started college at Rennselaer Polytechnic at the age of 17. In his first year, he came as mathematically close to flunking out without actually doing so as is possible. The usual suspects played a role here. This inauspicious beginning permitted him later to both sympathize and empathize with those of his current students who are in danger of actually falling off the bottom of the curve.
Encouraged to see the error of his ways, he finished his bachelor’s degree at Berkeley, then went on to an M.S. at San Francisco State, Ph.D. at U.C., Davis, and post-doctoral work at University of Washington. His Ph.D. thesis was published in Science, his post-doc work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Heppner came to the University of Rhode Island in 1969, and his first course was Biology 2, which had 968 students. It was run before there were either computers or copy machines. Since that time, he’s had slightly over 20,000 students, in 15 different courses.
He has written four books, and 65 scholarly papers. He wrote the instructor’s guide and test bank for the first edition of the most popular biology text ever published.
Heppner spent his sabbaticals, both of which were under Fulbright sponsorship, in the provincial Philippines and Brunei, on the island of Borneo. He has been a member of the Explorer's Club in New York since 1978.
For many years, he has been a crusader for providing professional training for college faculty who teach large classes, and has offered workshops on large class teaching for thousands of professors in the US and abroad.
Heppner is a private pilot, and railroad fanatic. For many years he was a volunteer search and rescue pilot for the Air Force Auxiliary. He has ridden over 500,000 miles by rail, and is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Railroad Museum of Rhode Island. His son is the writer Mike Heppner.
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