EDUCATION OFFICE

Bob Silbey was an amazing spectacle in the classroom.  Students would often find themselves mesmerized as if they were watching a trapeze artist executing death-defying leaps.  Professor Silbey simply owned their attention with his excitement, clarity, and humorous stories.  He received nearly every MIT teaching award including the School of Science Teaching Prize, the Graduate Student Council Award for Teaching and the Baker Award for Undergraduate Teaching (voted by the undergraduates).  In 1996, he was named a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, an honor that recognizes outstanding classroom teaching at MIT.  In appreciation for all his efforts in education, including classroom teaching, graduate and postdoctoral mentoring, curriculum innovation, the Student Life and Learning Task Force and the Undergraduate Educational Commons Task Force, the Chemistry Department will name the pulsating nexus of the department's educational mission, the Robert J. Silbey Chemistry Education Office. As Bob often like to say, "education is not like filling a bucket but rather lighting a fire."


Robert Silbey