By Remy McCool/south news editor

Part three in a five-part series on winners of the Chancellor’s Award for Exemplary Teaching, an annual recognition of faculty who impress and inspire their students.

It wasn’t until she was in graduate school at Texas Christian University that Shelli Hull decided she wanted to teach.

After many semesters working as a teacher’s assistant, she became drawn to the profession.

“I enjoyed being able to work with the students a lot more than sitting in the lab running samples all day,” Hull said.

Now a chemistry professor, Hull earned praise from her peers for winning the South Campus Chancellor’s Award.

“I am very proud of her accomplishment, and she is very deserving of the award,” mathematics and natural sciences dean Yojana Sharma said.

Hull always gravitated toward science classes, so she decided to do something in that field.

While working on her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Howard Payne University, she considered attending pharmacy school after graduation. A chemistry adviser told her that she might not want to stand all day filling prescriptions. She decided to attend graduate school but needed to decide what to do with a chemistry degree. It was during labs that she found her desire to teach.

“I never considered teaching when I was going to school, but when we had to teach the labs, interacting with the students, I thought, ‘I like that so much better,’” she said.

With SE Campus under construction while she was in graduate school, she knew TCC would be hiring. After getting her doctorate in chemistry in 1995, she began working on South Campus as an adjunct instructor and also taught part-time at Texas Wesleyan University. Many instructors moved to SE upon its completion in 1996, which left full-time positions open on South. She applied for one of those positions and got hired. Hull now teaches mostly non-major science classes.

“I’ve had a few [students] that have come and told me that they have changed their major to chemistry because they liked my class,” she said. “That’s really rewarding.”

She also enjoys when students who are not typically great in science or math find that they like it after her class.

“The kind of fun and entertaining thing is when they will come and tell you, ‘I was reading my shampoo bottle, and now I understand what those chemicals are,’” she said.

South student Erik Nelson is currently in Hull’s introductory chemistry class.

“I haven’t taken a chemistry class in a long, long time,” Nelson said. “She takes the time to explain things really well.”

Beyond the classroom, Hull is the chair of the new TCC chemistry academic curriculum team.

“It is a couple chemists from each campus where we meet districtwide,” she said.

The group handles any issues that may arise concerning the curriculum.

“She has been very active in working on the Associate of Science degree with a chemistry concentration,” Sharma said. “That actually got through the curriculum and instruction process, and that degree will be offered in the fall.”

Hull was surprised and flattered when she won the award.

“It’s rewarding to be able to see that you’re making contributions, not just in your classroom but campuswide, districtwide and communitywide and that you get recognized for that,” she said.