Innovative Lincoln East chemistry teacher wins 2005 McAuliffe Prize

The title and the cover of one of the books written by Dianne Epp may capture one of the main reasons why the Lincoln East High School chemistry teacher is the winner of the 2005 Christa McAuliffe Prize from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Education and Human Sciences -- her ability to find innovative ways to teach.

The title, "What's That Smell? The Science of Adolescent Odors," and the cover picture of a teen-ager holding an obviously smelly tennis shoe are both designed to get students interested in a subject that many often find intimidating.

"This book is a prime example of how Dianne gets and holds students' attention," Lincoln East Principal Mary Beth Lehmanowsky wrote in nominating Epp for the McAuliffe Prize. The honor is awarded annually to a Nebraska elementary- or secondary-school teacher in memory of McAuliffe, the teacher-astronaut who perished in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986.

"She is a scholar and yet she understands that if you want to attract students to science, you have to 'grab 'em,'" Lehmanowsky wrote. "She 'grabs 'em' every day with her well-crafted, innovative lessons and labs. She is demanding, her courses are rigorous, and year after year students say that Mrs. Epp prepared them for college and for the work force.

"Dianne is not the kind of teacher who teaches the same lesson year after year. She looks for ways to make scientific concepts come alive and to be fun. She will take risks to try something new and she will also put herself in the 'learning pool' with her students. Her enthusiasm for chemistry and for teaching is truly contagious."

Epp was honored by the College of Education and Human Sciences at a banquet at the Nebraska Union last weekend, when she received a $1,000 stipend and a plaque. Lee Ann Vaughan, science teacher at Omaha North High School, received a Special Recognition award.

A native of Yankton, S.D., Epp earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., and a master's degree in chemistry at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Before joining the faculty at East in 1982, she was a chemistry instructor at Bethel; a secondary-school science teacher with her husband, Anthony Epp, for two years (1965-67) in Zaire; a research chemist with FMC Glass Lab in Golden, Colo.; and a visiting instructor in chemistry at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

In addition, she took a one-year leave-of-absence from East in 1993-94 to serve as a visiting scholar with the Institute for Chemical Education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. During that sabbatical, she researched and wrote a three-volume monograph series titled "A Palette of Color" for high school chemistry teachers dealing with the chemistry of dyes. Epp spent several summers after that producing a second three-volume monograph series, "Chemical Manufacturing, Experimental Design, Product Testing."

Fellow teachers, current and former students, and parents also cited Epp's ability to work with students of all ability levels in her classrooms and laboratories.

"To Dianne, learning is helping each student, each day, in each class recognize what knowledge is, what ideas are," a fellow East teacher wrote in supporting Epp's nomination. "Dianne's classes are rigorous; she holds high standards. Importantly, though, those standards are not set up as standards outside each student's struggle to learn. In Dianne's classes, students develop the capacity to think, to find the means available to them to gain understanding, and to become for themselves 'seekers after wisdom,' as Socrates calls education."

Epp has won several previous awards in her career, most-recently Peter Kiewit Foundation Nebraska Teacher Achievement Awards in 1997 and 2001, and the Radioshack National Teaching Award in 2000.

The McAuliffe Prize was established in 1987 by the former Teachers College at UNL and is independent of any other awards that have been established in McAuliffe's name. Teachers College merged with the former College of Human Resources and Family Sciences in 2003 to create the College of Education and Human Sciences.

CONTACT: Jenny Patrick, Dean's Office, Education and Human Sciences, (402) 472-5400