Site - ROTA Header

Regents' Outstanding
Teaching Awards

Main page content

Photo of Matthew Goeckner

Matthew Goeckner, Ph.D.

Professor and Head Mathematical Sciences

UT Dallas

Babies are born with an innate ability to learn, and their parents are their first teachers.

It is in such unstructured learning environments that we become fully engaged in learning; finding out what cookies (or rocks) taste, smell, sound, feel and look like. Structured learning environments tend not to be so inclusive in our senses and often devolve into rote learning processes. This type of learning, while appropriate for computers, is not appropriate for humans. In contrast, our students must develop a lifelong passion to learn; and from this a desire to create new/better ideas from old. As a professor, I seek to instill these passions and desires into my students, independent of the course/topic that I am teaching. Based on what I have seen, I know that the future for humanity is very bright.