Bevilacqua named 2020 Penn State Teaching Fellow
Philip Bevilacqua, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and head of the Department of Chemistry at Penn State has received the Alumni/Student Award for Excellence in Teaching and has been named a 2020 Penn State Teaching Fellow.
The Penn State Alumni Association, in conjunction with undergraduate and graduate governing bodies, established the award in 1988. It honors distinguished teaching and provides encouragement and incentive for excellence in teaching. Recipients are expected to share their talents and expertise with others throughout the University system during the year following the award presentation.
In 2015, Bevilacqua was selected as a Center for Excellence in Science Education (CESE) Tombros Fellow in the Eberly College of Science. His fellow project was to integrate technologies into the Honors General Chemistry course to increase student engagement and learning. Additionally, he shared new expertise with colleagues so that effective new approaches could be integrated into the larger general chemistry classrooms.
One nominator said, “Dr. Bevilacqua helped me become a more dedicated learner … he considerably brightened my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.” Another noted, “He is a true team player, and always manages to foster positive discussions and bring out the best in his students.”
Bevilacqua describes his teaching philosophy as: “Understand how a student thinks, try to inspire, and above all else, be approachable.”
Bevilacqua has a research group of 10 students and postdoctoral researchers and believes that teaching inspires research, and the research inspires teaching. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles with undergraduates and mentored more than 50 undergraduates. He has been an advisory board member of Eberly College of Science Center for Excellence in Science Education since its inception in 2010 and has played a critical role in fostering that community by bringing in evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning in chemistry. In his classroom and as department head he has displayed a strong commitment to climate and diversity.
Bevilacqua focuses his research on attaining a molecular-level understanding of RNA, a macromolecule essential for all known forms of life that, among other functions, carries the genetic code for synthesizing proteins. Using techniques from molecular biology, chemistry, and physics, his lab studies how RNA folds into diverse structures and the functions that result from this diversity. Specifically, they investigate how RNA can act as an enzyme, how RNA folds in living cells, and how RNA may have played a role in the emergence of life on Earth.
Bevilacqua's commitment to teaching and research have been honored with the Priestley Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching in Chemistry by the Penn State Department of Chemistry in 2019, the C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Penn State Eberly College of Science Alumni Society in 2012, the Faculty Scholar Medal in Physical Sciences by Penn State in 2010, and a CAREER Award by the National Science Foundation in 2000. He was named a Tombros Education Fellow by the Penn State Center for Excellence in Science Education in 2015, and was a Penn State Schreyer Honors College Distinguished Honors Faculty Fellow from 2010 to 2012, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar from 2001 to 2006, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow from 2001 to 2003. Bevilacqua is an elected Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and has been a member of the editorial board for the scientific journal RNA since 2004. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Molecular Biology since 2014 and has published scientific papers in journals such as Biochemistry, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, and Science.
Prior to joining the Penn State faculty in 1997, Bevilacqua was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. He earned a doctoral degree at the University of Rochester in 1993 and a bachelor's degree at John Carroll University in 1987.