Lon Porter was born the year Star Wars arrived at movie theaters, a fact he offers up in the first minute of the interview for this article.
And that tells you more than you might think about the 2016 winner of the McLean-McTurnan-Arnold Award for Excellence in Teaching.
“When I was a kid, Star Wars got me really excited about science fiction, and that carried over to chemistry,” says Porter, an associate professor of chemistry and director of the College’s 3D Printing and Fabrication Center (3DPFC) who has taught at Wabash for 13 years. “Everything that I do I has this sense of adventure.”
“Lon brings the lab to life for our students, our prospective students, for countless Crawfordsville school children in his volunteer work,” says Dean of the College Scott Feller. “But he does so most intensely for the dozens of research interns who have begun careers as scientists in his research lab, careers that have continued for many at the most prestigious PhD programs in the country.”
“There is something attractive about going on a journey, on an adventure, whether it be in the classroom, or in a research project, or a game,” says Porter. “It gets me excited, and when that happens I’m willing to put the whatever work it takes into I'm doing to make it go forward. That's a central theme in my life, in whatever we do.”
Colleagues and students in chemistry witness Porter’s sense of adventure daily, but it spread to the rest of the campus when his interest in 3D printing led to the creation of the 3DPFC last year. Convinced 3D printing presented “a Sputnik moment” in science education with great opportunities for Wabash and students, Porter spent most of the previous summer and a lot of his own money building a printer and testing materials before he took the idea to Dean Feller. Quickly involving students in the journey, he began collaborating with the Center for Innovation, Business, and Entrepreneurship, presented the technology to a captivated alumni audience at the 2015 Faculty/Alumni Symposium, and earned a grant from the Independent Colleges of Indiana/Ball Brothers Venture Fund to establish the 3DPFC.
The work has become a creative force across campus and in Porter’s classroom.
“3D printing has allowed me to strike out on an intellectual adventure into an area of study pretty far from my chemistry background,” he says. “Digital design affected the way I approach problem solving in ways I also put to use in my more traditional chemistry research and in the classroom and teaching lab.”
Porter is grateful for those who taught him, especially his high school science teacher.
“In the high school classroom, Daniel Hambaum was making things explode, doing reactions that would change in all these different colors, sending little dish soap bottle rockets across the classroom. It was just stuff I had never seen before.
“There’s a sort of magic there when you don't understand what's going on. Now, some people will say, ‘Well, once you know how it works, then it's not so magical anymore.’ I would very strongly disagree with that.”
Porter has published more than 20 research papers, while earning six grants or research fellowships and serving as a reviewer for the Journal of Chemical Education. But teaching is primary for him.
“When people ask me what I am, I tell them I’m a teacher first. I’m a chemist, sure. And I love to do research. But my identity as a teacher comes first. So to be recognized with the College’s highest teaching honor is a dream come true.”