Briefly speaking: Making animal science human

What does it take to get students excited about dairy science? If you ask Professor Ed DePeters, he’ll tell you it’s more about the humans than the cows.

He was named the 2009 recipient of the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement in March. Here, he talks with us about his devotion to students and the way he studies for his animal science classes.

At the start of each quarter, DePeters takes photos of each lab group and memorizes approximately 70 students’ names. It takes about three weeks.

“I think the students like the fact that I know their name,” he said. It makes the student-teacher relationship more personalized: “I put in the extra effort because in the end, they’ll benefit.”

Preparing for lectures

DePeters joined the UC Davis faculty in 1979. But even after 30 years of teaching, he still gets nervous. To make sure he’s prepared for his lectures, he writes them out and practices his delivery out loud while pacing the campus arboretum. For many years, he would get strange looks. Today, people just assume he’s on a cell phone.

“I want to do well – for the students. I’m very critical of myself; I know when I give a crummy lecture. It really bothers me.” Then, he said, he “can’t wait until the next lecture because I know I’ll do better.”

Expertise in the classroom

Perhaps too modest about his talents as a teacher, DePeters brings amazing expertise to his classes, this fall a lower-division course in livestock production and upper-division classes in dairy cattle production and animal feeds and nutrition. His research — which has focused on how changes in a cow’s diet can change the composition of milk and how agricultural byproducts can be converted into nutritious feeds — has been widely applied in the dairy industry.

His classes explain how things work, DePeters said, but it’s equally important for students to learn why. It’s the best way for them to understand and apply what they know.

“I have lots of limitations as a teacher, but my enthusiasm makes up for it with the students,” he said.

A reflection of that enthusiasm is the praise he receives in evaluations: “Dr. DePeters was an excellent instructor, always kind and welcoming to the students and absolutely pumped to teach our class,” wrote one student.