Paul Blowers is a University Distinguished Professor in the Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Arizona. For the past 18 years, Paul has taught introductory and upper level chemical engineering courses, and has deeply integrated an active learning approach to his classroom with great success. He also has many academic involvements in the university like being a co-PI on an NSF project to help other faculty be successful in the collaborative learning spaces that have been built at the University of Arizona in the last two several years. He is focused on improving education and helping facilitate faculty learning communities to improve student retention through scaleable and low cost interventions that any faculty member can deploy. His other academic interests involve using life cycle assessment research to identify how to reduce environmental footprints of nearly every aspect of personal decisions. More recently, being terrified of heights, Paul has recently picked up indoor rock climbing to illustrate growth mindset with concrete examples he can use in pictures and words with his sophomore students. This complements his drive to learn how to read music and play the piano after wanting to for his entire life. The growth mindset stories he shares help shift student mindsets because the immediacy and honesty of his struggles.
