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Professors who are challenging, knowledgeable, engaged with students, and passionate about their subject are outstanding in the eyes of Portland State students. Scott Burns, who shared these findings at a recent Carnegie Conversation, epitomizes these traits say his own students. Colleagues listened, and surprised Burns at the event with a special certificate of appreciation for excellent teaching. Student praises for Burns were read aloud and displayed on a slide loop.

For more than a decade, Burns, chair and professor of geology, has coordinated the John Eliot Allen Awards for outstanding teaching in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He has always refused the nomination himself, saying it is conflict of interest. So at the Carnegie event, Dean Marvin Kaiser and Vice Provost Leslie McBride presented him with a special, one-of-a-kind teaching award.

During the interactive session, Burns discussed what he has learned from hundreds of students about excellent teaching. He asked faculty to share the traits they thought the students would value. Their top traits almost exactly matched those valued by students. However, faculty ranked humor much higher.

Burns ended the Carnegie Conversation with his other expertise, Oregon wine, offering his own picks of local reds and whites with a brief geological talk on the terrain of Oregon vineyards.