Paul Blowers of University of Arizona

From after-school clubs to in-class activities, University of Arizona engineering professor, Paul Blowers, uses every available moment to educate and motivate his students. Through his interactive teaching style, this award-winning educator has a true knack for inspiring students to learn.

Blowers understands that droning, lengthy lectures are not always the way to help students to understand a subject. For Blowers, a typical class involves discussions, time for questioning or challenging the professor, and hands-on activities to help all types of learners. “I don’t believe that lecturing is interesting because it is not interesting to me, so we have a lot of discussions,” Blowers says. “Students can ask me, challenge me. [I] approach situations how they understand, as opposed to me talking at them.”

After figuring out that a typical chemical engineering job was not intriguing to him, Blowers decided to go to graduate school to get a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. His interest was in design engineering. “I was a teaching assistant first semester and got a teaching award. Then, [during] the second semester, I [received another award], and that pretty much decided my fate,” he says.

In 1999, Blowers made the move to Arizona and began teaching chemical engineering, among other things, at the U of A. This professor, however, does not stop educating when class ends. As the Omega Chi Epsilon faculty advisor, Homebrewer’s Club faculty advisor and father of two, Blowers’ chances to teach are never-ending. —A.P.