A fter teaching 30,000 students, running through thousands more pieces of chalk and spending 43 years at the front of a packed freshman lecture hall, Professor of Chemistry James Bonk will hand over the reins of Duke's introductory chemistry class next year.
His time at the University has seen his influence spread through all aspects of Duke life, from athletics to academics to judicial affairs. But he will always be best known as the first professorial face seen every Monday and Wednesday, a teacher straight out of the dusty halls of academe who Duke relies upon to whip two-thirds of its freshman class into the rigor of college academics. Tonight, Duke will present him with the David and Janet Vaughn Brooks Teaching Award.
"If you have taught 30,000 people general chemistry and yesterday that came to an end, that's a big trauma in one's life to have that change. At the same time, it means so much to win an award like this," Bonk said.
Over his years, the formula for his chemistry class has changed, as has his take on his material--Bonk says he reviews each lecture each year as if he never taught it before.
But Bonk himself has not changed all that much. His dependability, his wit, his interest in and commitment to undergraduates endure in every class he teaches and every student he graduates.
Trained at Ohio State University, a 28-year-old Bonk came to Duke with the experience of a professor twice his age. The first of Ohio State's DuPont lecturing fellows, Bonk was trained specifically to teach large classes like Chemistry 11 and 12. Before his hire at Duke, he had been doing so through several academic years and summers.
Now, nearly a half-century later, Bonk, unlike many senior tenured professors, has relished teaching a large class of freshmen throughout his career.
"I just think I do it well. When I look at the place of basic chemistry in engineering, in medicine, in the biological sciences, in biochemistry, it is a very important foundation," he said. "I feel comfortable doing it. I feel I did a good job of doing it, so why not keep doing it? Some people think, OHow can one keep doing something for such a long time?' To me, it's not the
Over the years, Bonk has slowly become a legend, and stories about him have spread through generations of students and into national magazines and wire stories. Perhaps the most famous revolves around a group of students who said their car's flat tire prohibited them from coming back from a trip to the University of Virginia in time for a Bonk exam. The story goes that Bonk allowed them to retake the exam but weighted the test almost entirely on one question, "Which tire?"
"It's a true story that to my knowledge is based on a real incident, but is tremendously embellished," he said, adding that he would never place so much emphasis on a trick question. "My own recollection is not terribly clear because if I'm in the right ballpark, it's something that happened way back in the '60s. It is a great story and certainly I wasn't going to do anything to destroy a great story."
But his favorite memory is also the moment that received the most immediate national attention. In the mid-1970s, a student organization called Pie Die modeled itself after the mafia and sold "pie hits" on students, professors and deans. After a psychology professor took the first pie to the face, Bonk knew he would not be far behind--the sheer size of his classes, which usually include more than 200 students, told him he should watch his back.
"Sure enough, one day I finished a lecture and a side door opened and there was a person charging toward [me] with a lemon meringue pie," said Bonk, who added that he ducked away from the pie, which hit his shoulder. "I wasn't wiped out, I still had my vision. If you've ever been hit with a pie, you find yourself rather upset."
So as the student ran out the door, through the Biological Sciences parking lot and into the forest, Bonk followed him. When the unknowing student jumped into a deep creek, he was no longer able to evade the fit professor, who is still a volunteer assistant tennis coach. Although Bonk demanded the student's identity and remained angry for a while, he looks back on it now as a fond, fun memory that was picked up by the Associated Press and Parade magazine and resulted in handfuls of letters from old students and colleagues.
"It was a wonderful human interest story," he said. "The younger generation loved the fact that the prof had gotten hit by a pie, and the older people liked the fact that the old man had caught up with the kid."
Bonk's fitness in managing to chase down this student speaks to another of his roles at Duke--he is a father to the tennis program. When he first arrived and Eddie Cameron was heading the athletic program, only football and basketball coaches were hired, and their assistants filled in all the other sports. The football team's backfield coach was assigned to the tennis program but was also occupied with his football duties that fall. So Bonk stepped in, running practices and working out with the team. He continues to be a patron saint, an avid fan and a consistent influence through several coaching regimes and hundreds of athletes.
In fact, more than 30 former tennis players gathered money to name the trophy room of the new Sheffield Tennis Center after him.
"It's probably one of the most unbelievable experiences I've ever had," he said, "because I didn't even know about it and you have to realize that people who were fund-raising were contacting players all over the U.S.... It is something I shall always be grateful for. There aren't many living people who have a room named after them."
After giving up Chem 11 and 12, Bonk will remain director of undergraduate studies in chemistry and a volunteer assistant coach of the men's tennis team. He will also shift focus to developing and teaching a chemistry class for non-chemistry majors. Meanwhile, a host of top chemistry professors will take over Chem 11 and 12, learning to teach the course that has been Bonk's domain for four decades.
"He has done a really good job communicating to students, getting them excited about science," said George B. Geller Professor of Chemistry and department chair John Simon. "The challenge is on the rest of us to teach an equally great course from now on."
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