Elizabeth Keller

Professor

“What I’d like to do as a teacher is to present people with new ways to look at what it means to be human.”

Growing up on a farm in Illinois, Elizabeth Keller remembers wanting to be a doctor. “I remember wanting to go out and find cures for diseases,” she says. But her high school teachers, responding to her inquisitive nature, made her see the value of teaching. “I had such wonderful teachers,” says Elizabeth. “They introduced me to new ways of thinking and living. And that pretty much decided me on my path.”

After taking her Ph.D. at Notre Dame, Elizabeth did research in neuro-chemistry for the Veteran’s Administration. But at the suggestion of a neighbor—a teacher at SMC—she applied for part time work. “So I started teaching here and I thought, ‘Wow! This is a lot more fun than research!’”

“Teaching is just a wonderful profession,” says Elizabeth Keller. And though she says that “chemistry is a lovely discipline,” she feels the unchecked progress of science needs tempering. “I’m kind of an eco-feminist,” she says, adding that holistic and nutritional uses of science may ultimately be of the greatest benefit to humankind. But her enthusiasm for science is genuine. “And I think what I enjoy most,” says Keller, “is when people leave my classes feeling that they’ve learned a lot and had some fun along the way.”

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