Members of the ISU community have an opportunity to be blown away by nature’s forces.

The ISU College of the Liberal Arts and Sciences will be continuing their master teacher series with Doug Yarger, professor of geological and atmospheric sciences. Yarger is the third speaker of six in the lecture program. The college chose faculty honorees for their excellence in implementing technology inside their classrooms.

Yarger will speak at 3:30 p.m. in 1140 Howe Hall about “Using Technology to Create Learning Environments.”

“If I was a student, I’d definitely want to be there,” he said.

The audience will view virtual reality pieces, Yarger said, including a computer simulation of a rotating tornado, which he said will be “beautiful.”

“It’s really cutting edge stuff,” he said.

While teaching his classes, Yarger said students encounter great opportunities every day in their classrooms at the university.

“I think, in some ways, Iowa State is ahead of many other places in ways of challenging students in classrooms,” he said.

Pete Boysen, senior systems analyst for academic information technologies, said he has known Yarger for many years and will attend the lecture today. Boysen had the chance to work with him a few years ago for Yarger’s meteorology class.

“In 1995, I started working on ClassNet with him,” he said. “I built that to enable students to do weather forecasting.”

Yarger said today’s seminar will be his last because he has decided to retire indefinitely from teaching. He said he retired last semester but has stayed at Iowa State and taught for free.

“It’s time to move on – the time is right,” he said.

Throughout all of his teaching experience, Yarger said he has learned it is best for students to learn from their errors in order to become better learners.

“Making mistakes is an important part of learning,” he said. “We want to give students the chance to make mistakes. We used to give our students Fs – now we tell them to work harder.”