Outstanding faculty: Ali Nawshad, PhD

Ali Nawshad, PhD, professor in the UNMC College of Dentistry, will receive the Outstanding Teacher Award at the annual faculty meeting, which will be held at 3 p.m. on April 21. It will be held virtually via Zoom, and the passcode is 2021. 

Ali Nawshad, PhD

• Name: Ali Nawshad 
• Title: Professor, UNMC Department of Oral Biology, College of Dentistry
• Joined UNMC: 2005 
• Hometown: Lincoln, Nebraska. Native of Dhaka, Bangladesh 

What are the greatest rewards of teaching?  

There is no hat I proudly wear more than the one of an educator. As a teacher, you get the privilege to educate and inspire young minds to hopefully make a difference in the world. It is extremely gratifying to motivate and mold curious minds to be creative and knowledgeable. No two days are the same; it’s constantly evolving. And you will always find new, unconventional ways to express your lesson plans and be amused and enriched by the personalities, values and goals of the students.  

Describe a moment in your career when you realized you had picked the right occupation.  

Both my parents were professors. I think teaching has always been in my genes. Throughout my career, I have always been surrounded by great educators. My former supervisor, Elizabeth Hay, MD, of Harvard Medical School, was an outstanding mentor and educator. She influenced me to teach developmental biology to medical students. At the college of dentistry, I was motivated by emeritus professor Stan Harn, PhD, and Larry Crouch, PhD, who are, in my opinion, role-model educators. My training and exposure with the UNMC Interprofessional Academy of Educators (IAE) is a huge inspiration as well. 

What are the biggest challenges you face as a teacher?  

COVID fatigue. Keeping students attentive, engaging and excited during remote teaching was the most challenging for me and for the students by far. The past two years have shown that there is no substitute for onsite traditional lectures. To keep the dry remote lectures exciting, we made Zoom sessions spontaneous, reciprocal, interactive — taking breaks when we were overwhelmed, cracking humorless jokes, wearing psychedelic color glasses, sharing our travel experiences, drinking tea at coffee breaks, etc. In the end, we, in tandem, made it work. Another challenge is communication and adapting to constantly morphing students' learning experiences — just because you know your subject matter the best does not always mean you can relay it to the students equally well. The students today have a different vocabulary. It is a generation of emojis 🙂, so teachers also need to transform to speak the same language. 

How do you know when you've been successful as a teacher?  

For our students, the four years they spend with us is the most meaningful and exciting part of their lives, and they give us a lot of their valuable prime time to learn. I am only successful as a teacher if I can make their learning experiences joyful and stimulating. Behind teaching the genes of cleft palate, my bar of being successful depends on my motivating them to be inquisitive, to think and ponder and always ask "Why" and "Why not?"