UNCW professor honored with Excellence in Teaching award

Mar 23, 2012 (Star-News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Mike Messina won't stop moving.

He's at his desk in his office at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, sitting -- but not still.

His feet, clad in red Chuck Taylors, cross and uncross. He pulls tiny pieces of tape off the dispenser in front of him and balls them up. His eyes widen and his hands dance as he talks about his work in theoretical chemistry.

It doesn't seem like a topic that would make someone so bouncy. But for this professor, it's normal, said Match DuToit, a senior chemistry and physics major who researches with Messina.

"He's excited about research, all the time," DuToit said. "If something doesn't work, it just opens up another avenue. He's really positive." Messina's jittery enthusiasm, combined with his work with students like DuToit, won him one of this year's Excellence in Teaching awards from the UNC-system board of governors. One professor from each of the system's 17 campuses gets the honor, and Messina was chosen as UNCW's best.

Messina isn't the stereotypical mad scientist, peering into bubbling beakers through thick plastic goggles. As a theoretical chemist, most of what he does happens with just pencil and paper.

"You study not how to make a molecule or not detecting if it's in a sample," he said, "but understanding why it's held together, how it moves on the most basic microscopic level." That type of chemistry "boils everything down," Messina said. He uses those same methods in his teaching, a philosophy he learned from Rob Coalson, his Ph.D. adviser at the University of Pittsburgh.

In Coalson's classes, "everything was logically laid out," Messina said. "That's how I teach, on the blackboard. You know -- tell everything." He'll lay out exams top to bottom. If he's introducing a new concept or vocabulary, he'll repeat it over and over again. It's an energetic teaching style, true to the Messina form.

"I'm covered from head to toe in chalk," he said. "I don't use PowerPoint. Ever." His crackling energy is tailor-made for his research. Theoretical chemistry is more suited to the handwritten equations littering Messina's desk than painstaking test-tube measurements. It's fast-paced -- perfect for Messina.

"I have an idea, and I have the undergraduates implement it, and it either works or it doesn't," he said. "I can get a lot done with smart students, and it doesn't have to take two years." He's worked with 71 undergraduates in the 16 years he's been at UNCW. Of those, 27 have had their research published.

It's an attractive offer, DuToit said, because your name in print puts you ahead of the pack.

When Messina proposed DuToit join his research circle, there was little hesitation on DuToit's part.

"I thought about it for like a day," he said.

DuToit's speedy response is proof that students take away more than knowledge from their time with Messina. They also get a bit of his buzz.

Pressley Baird: 343-2328 On Twitter: @PressleyBaird ___ (c)2012 the Star-News (Wilmington, N.C.) Visit the Star-News (Wilmington, N.C.) at www.starnewsonline.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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