Ray Nagem, flexing the other side of his brain...

The first thing Ray Nagem does when he walks into the spartan Photonics Center classroom is raise all the blinds, opening a view of the city -- or at least of the facing brownstones -- and cutting the harsh fluorescents with natural light. It is a hot, humid day, and by all appearances the students in Nagem's summer mechanics class are sluggish as the class begins. The curative powers of the intense air conditioning have yet to take effect, and things seem to be off to a slow start.

But with Nagem, Metcalf Award-winning associate professor of mechanical engineering, appearances deceive. A quietly confident teacher, he is not afraid to wait and let the class unfold at its own pace. Minutes in, students who had seemed to be doodling in their notebooks begin raising their hands; they've actually been doing calculations, reworking some of yesterday's homework problems and looking ahead to tomorrow's assignment. One student asks Nagem to go over a problem from the last assignment: he got it correct, but "the math seemed messy." It's a question Nagem relishes. Chalk dust flying, erasers at the ready, multiple blackboards on reserve, he's off, breaking down calculations, inviting questions, and reminding his students to "bring the math and the ideas together -- that's how you develop some feeling for the subject."

Nagem was one of two recipients this year of the University-wide Metcalf Award, which recognizes a professor's scholarship, dedication, and commitment to students. Good teaching, Nagem says, involves two things: "First, you really have to know what you're talking about, not just think that you do; second, you have to want to do it." Being a good engineering teacher, he believes, means providing students with a model of a good engineer. "Engineering is not a classroom subject. It's an active thing. What you do in the classroom should be a reflection of what's going on in the field. The people I admired most, the people I gained the most from, were people who were not only teachers but who did real work in their fields and then went into the classroom and didn't do anything flashy, just presented the fundamentals. People learn mostly by example."

The Very Model of a Modern Engineer

Following Nagem's example, a student could go far. He's been interested in how things work -- the basis of mechanical engineering -- since he was a boy in San Diego, building models, taking things apart, and fooling around with cars. He came east at eighteen to attend MIT, and after earning a master's degree he returned to California to work as an engineer at IBM. Two years later, he was back at MIT for his Ph.D. He began his tenure at BU overseas, teaching graduate-level courses in the University's program in West Germany for two semesters and then signing on in Boston.

He teaches classes in structures (machine components, vehicle structures, civil engineering structures) and dynamics (machine design, rotating machinery, space vehicle dynamics). He also maintains an active research program. One current project, for the Air Force, involves analyzing the composite materials used in the wings of fighter aircraft. He collects inspection data and studies them to predict the structural integrity and the lifetime of wing components. He also spent three summers doing sonar analysis and other underwater acoustics work at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in New London, Connecticut. The Navy uses sonar -- essentially, pictures of sound -- to detect ships, submarines, and underwater mines.

The Big Blue Box

The last thing someone would expect to find in the office of a mechanical engineer is a box from Tiffany, so when Nagem pulls out a large container in that distinctive shade of blue, he earns a laugh. He wants to show off what's inside, a crystal bowl he recently received for ten years of service at Boston University. Teaching was never a career goal, he says, but "this is the best job I've had." He enjoys working with young people: "They're not too cynical yet, they're willing to think, they have relatively open minds. I've found that they're very willing to give you many breaks."

There are other surprises in Nagem's office, too. The keyboard, for instance, an able stand-in for the piano he plays as often as he can at home and with friends in a chamber music group. And the books -- a collection of essays by former New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell sits on his desk, and he gives a rave review of Salman Rushdie's novel The Moor's Last Sigh. And then there's the art, a whole wall of it, mostly by Nagem's former ENG colleague Guido Sandri. Several of the drawings are caricatures of Nagem; one, titled Nagem Hears Brahms, casts its subject in a dreamy light, carried away by the music.

Nagem follows his own muse, and he hopes he can show his students how to follow theirs. "In many ways, I believe that teaching is impossible," he wrote recently. "Most subjects of value can be learned, but they cannot be taught. A good teacher must provide guidance and help overcome particular difficulties, but the primary task is to stimulate the learning process of the individual student. This is the key to educating students who will go on to find their own way to personal and intellectual fulfillment."