Dr. Steve Potter never wanted to be conventional.

An associate professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Potter requires his students to write Wikipedia articles. He encourages them to dream up their own ideas for extra credit. He learns every student’s name, even in large lectures.

Now, Potter’s atypical techniques have helped earn him the 2013 Teaching Excellence Award, given by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia (USG). The award is one of the most prestigious teaching prizes of its kind, and Potter is one of only three recipients of this year’s award. (He is the only recipient from a major research university.)

Potter, who teaches neuroscience courses, was unanimously selected by a panel of faculty members and administrators from around the university system. The panel commended him for what he calls his “Real World” approach to education, which highlights practical applications for academic topics. The name also implies that in-class study should benefit the wider world in some way, which is where Potter’s Wikipedia assignments come in. In his introductory neuroscience course, students spend the semester researching a topic that they eventually write a Wikipedia article about. By now, Potter’s students have been responsible for hundreds of detailed entries on the site.

Potter teaches his classes with a simple philosophy: Any student can get the grade he or she wants. But he doesn’t grade on a curve or assign easy work. In a way, he does the opposite: He tells students exactly how much work they’ll need to do in order to succeed.

“I lay out in great detail all the things it takes to get an A,” Potter wrote in his nomination portfolio, “and do my best to raise their excitement and motivation to a level that makes all that work seem like fun.”

For receiving the Teaching Excellence Award, Potter will be honored at the annual USG Gala. The Board of Regents, which sponsors his award, is the governing body for Georgia's colleges and universities.
 
Potter has taught at Georgia Tech since 2002, and several faculty members wrote recommendation letters for Potter’s nomination portfolio. But the award-selection panel was also impressed with notes of praise from his students:  
 
“Thanks for such a great class! Even though the tests and assignments were challenging, I feel like I learned so much throughout the semester.”

“I came into Intro to Neuroscience not knowing anything about the field, and because of you, I am enthralled with the field now.”

“Your course has been, simply put, one of the best courses I have taken at this university, and that is saying quite a bit.”