In the corner of his office, Paul Barnhart keeps a 33-year-old photo of himself when he was a Case Western Reserve University undergrad to remind him to think what it was like to be a student—and to show students he was once like them.
“As a college senior, I was a different person in many ways,” said Barnhart, now an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “There’s a certain amount of confidence lacking when we’re young, requiring some attention and some care.”
The attention and care Barnhart provides his students earned him a 2015 J. Bruce Jackson, MD, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring. The Jackson Award celebrates faculty and staff who have guided a student in his or her academic and career paths, fostered the student’s long-term personal development, challenged the student to reflect, explore and grow as an individual and supported and/or facilitated the student’s goals and life choices.
Barnhart and Gillian Weiss, associate professor of history, who also won the award, will be honored during commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 17.
The Jackson Award follows Barnhart’s 2013 Wittke Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD here, and spent two decades working for NASA contractors before returning as a full-time faculty member five years ago.
His teaching led one student who nominated Barnhart for the Jackson to consider a career in aerospace engineering.
“Though I wanted to go down this road, I was apprehensive of the unknown and uncertain I had what it took to follow through,” the student wrote. He credited Barnhart’s guidance and support for allaying his fears and helping him clarify his goals.
“Dr. Barnhart once commented on my tenacity when he saw me struggling to tackle certain problems in the Aerospace Design class,” the student wrote. “He saw something in me that I had not consciously realized…It motivated me to work even harder.”
Barnhart suggested a design project that would help the student gain skills and experience useful for graduate school, and, despite the student’s fears of receiving a poor grade, take a graduate-level course for full credit rather than auditing the class. Both forced the student to push himself harder than he’d pushed before and, he wrote, gave him confidence he could succeed.
Barnhart, who was not the student’s official adviser, then helped him choose a graduate program that fit his interests and abilities. He starts in the fall.
A second student who nominated Barnhart for the Jackson earned a D in Flight Mechanics, but Barnhart could see he cared about the class and grade. Barnhart spent extra time with him in this and a second class.
When they realized the student needed a class offered only in spring to graduate—requiring the student to stay an extra semester—Barnhart ended up teaching it to him as an independent study course. While that added to Barnhart’s teaching load, it saved the student the expense of another semester.
“He had to generate readings, problem sets and exams, and then he had to grade the responses, all for one student,” the nominee wrote. “I wasn’t his best student, yet he still spent so much time on me.”
The effort reflects Barnhart’s own experience—in particular, the help and advice he received from Professor Joe Prahl, who was one of his teachers and is still on faculty, and P.G. “Gerry” Lind, who had many roles, including assistant to the dean of academic affairs at Case Institute of Technology while Barnhart was an undergraduate.
“So, if a student requires help in a class or advice, I will give him or her as much time as it takes,” Barnhart said. “It takes more effort to help a student who is struggling, but our purpose here is to get all students through the program, not just those who do it easily.”