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Gebo to address hands-on, lifelong learning

September 18, 2013
Dan Gebo

Dan Gebo

Everyone remembers “Show and Tell” from kindergarten.

But college?

Why not, asks Dan Gebo, a Distinguished Teaching Professor, Distinguished Research Professor and two-time Board of Trustees Professor at NIU.

“I like to bring items for students to see and hold. This helps in the visualization of the topic at hand,” said Gebo, who was awarded his Presidential Teaching Professorship in 2008. “This ‘hands-on’ approach has worked well for me whether I am at my daughter’s elementary school (where you might first use this approach with kids) on up to adult level public talks and university lectures.”

Gebo will present “Hands on Learning – From Kids to Retirees” at noon Thursday, Sept. 26, in the Capitol Room of the Holmes Student Center.

Refreshments will be served at 11:30 a.m. The seminar is open to all; no registration is required.

A faculty member in the NIU Department of Anthropology since 1987, Gebo said he hopes “to provide some practical teaching considerations for new faculty to consider when developing a course and to show how a ‘hands-on’ approach provides one-on-one instruction – often after the class.”

Dan Gebo

“This approach is a more wide open view of education that allows students to ask questions and to think off the cuff in a more personal setting,” Gebo said.

Gebo’s primary research area is in primatology, where he has conducted field work in rainforests and in deserts across four continents (North and South America, Africa and Asia). His research focus is on primate locomotion.

His current field project is in Inner Mongolia (China) where he is actively engaged in finding the earliest fossil primates. He has published 80 scientific articles, including four in the elite scientific journals Nature and Science.

The Sept. 26 presentation is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center. For more information, call (815) 753-0595 or email facdev@niu.edu.