Making a Point: Weber's Founder's Day Speech Sticks
In his popular 2002 book The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell argues that popular movements – whether they are trends, attitudes or even the rise of particular products – spread in a viral fashion, not unlike health epidemics. As their popularity advances, Gladwell says, they eventually rise to a “moment of critical mass, a threshold, or a boiling point” – or, as he calls it, the tipping point.
To Dr. E. Todd Weber, this phenomenon is key to the notion of leadership, and he invoked it during his faculty address to the newest class of Andrew J. Rider Scholars at the annual Founder’s Day Program on November 8 in the Bart Luedeke Center Theater. There, Weber told the Rider Scholars, who were honored as the top one percent by grade point average of sophomores, juniors and seniors from Rider’s six colleges and schools, that while they lead by setting a tone of academic achievement, grades shouldn’t be their ultimate objective.
“I think scholars play an important role in influencing their fellow students to excel in their academics, but the really important thing is what all students do with their newfound knowledge,” explained Weber, an associate professor of Biology at Rider, where his research examines the neurochemical basis of biological timekeeping, specifically, the organization of mammals’ physiology and behavior into circadian, or daily, rhythms by the nervous system.
Concepts reach their respective tipping points by striking a resonant chord within an audience, and Weber says that the ability of today’s Rider students to effect change will be greatly influenced by their ability to communicate clearly.
“Think about it: everybody interacts with other people in some way. Even a lighthouse keeper has a message – his light – and he or she changes its color or its pattern in a way to make it more effective,” he said. “Understanding the factors that can make a difference in the way we influence other people and the impact those things have can allow us to do them better. That shapes what each of us feels about ourselves and, ultimately, what we end up contributing to society.”
Weber enjoys making his contribution through teaching and working with students as they make the often difficult transition to college life. In fact, his dedication to first-year students earned Weber the Rider University Distinguished Teaching Award for 2006. He says that it wasn’t until his arrival at Rider in 2001, when the University was busy addressing a growing national trend of low retention and poor performance among first-year biology students, that he was fully able to realize the scope of their plight.
“Being in the trenches with those students, seeing how difficult it was for many of them to adjust to college life and deal with the realities of rigorous science coursework had a big effect on me,” Weber said. “I think that’s why The Tipping Point made such an impact on me, because I was able to see how the message I was giving was not necessarily connecting. There are ways to influence what you want to get across to students, and in pursuing the effort to make that connection, I threw myself into revamping the curriculum, along with (Biology Department Chair) Julie Drawbridge and (Associate Professor of Biology) Paul Jivoff.”
As a result, Weber says he finds himself highly involved in activities at Rider that he believes have an immediate and profound effect on the student experience. “Teaching freshmen, helping to shape the Science Learning Community and working with some terrific students in my laboratory are my ‘Big Three,’” said Weber, who, along with a few colleagues, just submitted an application for science students fellowships they believe would greatly ease financial issues for student recipients. “Because of all this, I’ve been able to bond with a lot of terrific students, and I like to think that I’ve made a difference. The Distinguished Teaching Award made me feel like I have, and that keeps me going.”
Weber’s interest in science developed as a young boy in western Pennsylvania, launching him on a course of research and scholarship that would eventually put him in front of a university classroom. “There weren’t really many other kids to play with, so I spent a lot of time wandering the forests and fields with my dog, and that’s where my interest in biology kicked in” he said.
After earning a B.S. in the subject from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, Weber then received an M.S. and a Ph.D., both in Physiology, from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1992 and 1994, respectively. His pursuits in research have taken him as far as Texas, where he earned a National Resource Council postdoctoral fellowship with the United States Air Force, spending 1995 to 1997 at Brooks AFB in San Antonio, followed by two years there as a civilian scientist working for the Department of Defense.
“Even before the research group broke up at the Air Force base, I realized that I wanted to get back into academia,” said Weber, who taught night classes at the University of Texas–San Antonio for two years prior to the closing of Brooks AFB. He then relocated to the University of Houston, where he worked as a research assistant professor with his mentor from 1999 to 2001. Eventually, however, a desire to pursue his own line of research and to teach led Weber to look elsewhere. As it turned out, he found his destination somewhere under a tree.
“I started checking out the advertised jobs in a few of the high-profile science journals, and it was the silhouette of the oak tree in the Rider logo that caught my eye,” Weber recalled of the job search that brought him to Lawrenceville. Since then, it has been Weber himself who has helped knowledge, like the fabled oak tree, take root in the minds of his students.
