Michael Palmer, Associate Professor and Assistant Director, joined the Teaching Resource Center in the Fall of 2003. He presents interactive workshops locally and nationally, regularly consults with faculty, graduate student instructors, departments, and administrative units about teaching and learning matters, and designs and administers professional development programs, such as the TRC's graduate student professional development program, Tomorrow's Professor Today, and the Center's Course Design Institute. In addition to his work at the TRC, Michael works closely with a local company designing and implementing experiential learning programs for corporate and academic clients.

Michael's pedagogical interests include course design, active learning, collaborative learning, teaching large enrollment courses, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He teaches a highly interdisciplinary course on infinity and a large-enrollment, inquiry-based laboratory course for first-year chemistry students.

Born and raised in Wyoming, Michael obtained his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. There he won both the University of Wyoming Outstanding Dissertation Award and the Sara Jane Rhoads Award for Outstanding Research for the Ph.D. Degree in Chemistry. Upon completing his graduate studies, Michael accepted a postdoctoral research position in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Virginia. Michael's research focused on environmentally and industrially important catalytic processes, from the desulfurization of petroleum feedstocks and the conversion of natural gas to liquid fuels to the selective oxidation of aromatic compounds. Published accounts of his research can be found in Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, and Organometallics.