- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Other recipients of undergraduate teaching awards are Emily Albu, Classics; Seeta Chaganti, English; and Susan Keen, Evolution and Ecology.
They and other award winners will be honored at a ceremony hosted by the UC Davis Academic Senate/UC Davis Academic Federation on Tuesday night, May 13 in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The 6:15 program will be preceded by a reception.
Carey, an internationally recognized scientist, was praised in the nomination package as “an incredible teacher who eagerly and passionately engages students through his highly successful, innovative and digitally progressive techniques…he is known as a trail blazer, a forward-thinker, and a digital-savvy strategist on the cutting edge of education.“
Carey motivates, encourages and inspires students to learn through creative, innovative ways, such as the student-produced, instructor-directed video productions, “One Minute Entomologist” and “How to Make an Insect Collection (the latter won an award from the Entomological Society of America). Student comments about his classes ranged from “best ever class at UC Davis” to “invaluable” to “unique opportunity.” Another wrote that he comes prepared to each lecture, "excited and passionate to teach.”
Said one student: “Without a doubt, Dr. Carey is the most amazing, creative, inspiring and technologically savvy professor on campus…Dr. Carey encourages classroom discussion, treating all questions with respect, dignity and wisdom; he often follows up with a humorous anecdote. His lectures, course organization, innovation, creativity and mentoring are extraordinary.”
Carey is the pioneering and driving force behind the UCTV Research Seminars and began video-recording seminars in his department several years ago and then encouraged video-recording on all the other nine UC campuses.
Carey originated and launched “One Minute Entomologist,” in which students research an insect or arthropod, outline it, and video-record it. So far, the students have produced more than 125 videos. He and Professors Lynn Kimsey and Edwin Lewis co-teach the course.
Another innovative class is “Terrorism and War,” an online course offered by Carey through the Science and Society program. It was selected one of 27 courses, UC systemwide, to receive grand support ($75,000) from UC Online.
Among his many other projects:?
Write Like a Professor; The Research Term Paper, in which he partnered with Assistant Professor Sarah Perrault in the University Writing Program to produce a playlist of 13 videos.
Longevity, a 4-credit cross-listed course that Carey teaches based on his research program in the biology and demography of aging (biodemography). After offering the course to 14 students in 1999, he saw enrollment soar to an initial cap of 200 students and then, due to increasing demand, jump to 250 last year. The course, designed entirely by Carey, provides students with crucial information on aging and lifespan, so that they can become skilled human development and health professionals, informed voters, knowledgeable parents and grandparents, health-conscious citizens, and life-long students of writing. See kinship video.
Carey is active in the Campus Council for Information Technology, which provides advice and recommendations to key UC Davis administration on educational and information technology and its use at UC Davis in support of instruction, research, administration and public service.
Carey brings to the classroom his expertise in many scientific areas. He is considered the world's foremost authority on arthropod demography. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and three books on this or closely related topics, including the monograph Longevity (Princeton, 2003) and the “go-to” book on insect demography, Demography for Biologists with Special Emphasis on Insects (Oxford, 1993). His landmark paper on “slowing of mortality at older ages,” published in Science in 1992 and cited more than 350 times, keys in on his seminal discovery that mortality slows at advanced ages. The UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Science cited this as one of “100 Ways in Which Our College Has Shaped the World.”
Carey recently received the 2014 C. W. Woodworth Award from the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America (PBESA) for his outstanding accomplishments in entomology spanning four decades. He is a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, and the California Academy of Sciences. The professor chaired the systemwide UC Committee on Research Policy, served on the system-wide UC Academic Council, and is a former vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. In addition, he serves as the associate editor of three journals: Genus, Aging Cell, and Demographic Research.