Dr. Linda L. Spremulli, Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the recipient of the 2012 Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. Teaching is the University's primary obligation and proudest accomplishment of its faculty.
In 1993, the Board of Governors established this award with the following resolution: "To underscore the importance of teaching and to encourage, identify, recognize, reward, and support good teaching within the University, the Board of Governors shall create annual system-wide teaching awards with monetary stipends which are designated the Board of Governors Awards for Excellence in Teaching."
Professor Spremulli will be honored at the spring graduation ceremony, when a Board of Governors member will participate with Chancellor Thorp in presenting her an engraved bronze medallion and award check.
"Linda clearly stands out as one of the finest teachers in our department's long history," said Chemistry Department Chair Matt Redinbo. "Former students still mention Linda specifically regarding courses they took twenty years ago. —Talk about making an impact."
"Linda clearly stands out as one of the finest teachers in our department's long history..."
Dr. Spremulli has been a faculty member at this university for 35 years, and during that time she has been, in the words of one colleague, a teacher who is "revered by her students for her dedication, clarity, and enthusiasm." Despite her seniority in the department, she regularly teaches General Chemistry II to over 200 undergraduate students and Introduction to Biological Chemistry to approximately 170 undergraduates.
Professor Spremulli's teaching philosophy is based on the recognition that "teaching and learning go hand in hand." She has put much thought into how to facilitate learning in a large class setting. She seeks to demonstrate for the students how one thinks in the field of chemistry and to expose students to the information they will need to master in order to proceed to the next level. To achieve these goals, she condenses large amounts of information into a manageable body of knowledge and presents it in a clear and logical way "so that the students can understand the basic principles and how these principles lead to a logical pattern of thought."
Linda's colleagues in the Chemistry Department admire her skills as a teacher. Her department chair says that she is "simply the finest teacher I have encountered in my career, including all my undergraduate and graduate studies, and my time as a Professor at this outstanding institution." He notes that a talented undergraduate student said that she would miss Dr. Spremulli the most of all of the people she had encountered at Carolina and that she even learned from Dr. Spremulli's exam questions. Two of her colleagues remarked on Dr. Spremulli's accessibility to her students. One said that she "is incredibly generous with her time." Another noted that she holds "what seem like never ending office hours" and that she had "never seen [Dr. Spremulli] turn a student away or say that she cannot answer a question after class."
Dr. Spremulli's students echo this praise. A current student, who is not a chemistry major, said that Dr. Spremulli "does a great job explaining difficult concepts in easily understood terms." A former student, now a graduate student in biological and bio-medical science at Harvard, said that Dr. Spremulli was definitely the best teacher he had at Carolina and that her courses led him to become a scientist rather than a physician. Other students praised her for being able to connect with all of her students, even in a large class, and to teach in ways that reach students regardless of their learning styles. Another noted that Dr. Spremulli was "always excited about the material in spite of her many years of teaching."
Dr. Spremulli did her undergraduate work at the University of Rochester, where she received a BA degree in Chemistry. She received her PhD in Biochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.