Dr. Kelly Sheppard
Associate Professor in Chemistry
Kelly Sheppard
Sheppard is a biochemist who came to Skidmore College in the Fall of 2010. He teaches
general chemistry and biochemistry courses. In those courses, Kelly takes a guided
inquiry approach to support students building their understanding of course material
from what they already know and in the process make connections between different
courses as well as to the world outside the classroom. In the process, students learn
not just course content but also how to critically use their knowledge and understanding
to make informed decisions and how to incorporate new information to reevaluate and
revise models. To further facilitate that development, he cultivates a supportive
learning environment and actively encourages students in his classes to think about
their own learning.
As a culminating experience for Chemistry majors with a biochemistry concentration,
Kelly developed an Experimental Biochemistry laboratory course that challenges students
to leverage what they have learned at Skidmore to address an open research question
in a structured fashion. The work in the course builds from and back into his own
research interests to better understand how bacteria have adapted biochemically to
different environmental niches. In his scholarship, he actively collaborates with
Skidmore undergraduates and views his research program as an extension of his teaching.
To better foster a supportive environment in the sciences at Skidmore for all students
and to better help science students understand the importance of the other liberal
arts, Kelly is looking to bring the Being Human in STEM project at Amherst to Skidmore.