Niel Tubbs
 |
2009
Niel Tubbs
(Friend of Education)
Chemistry Instructor
Niel L. Tubbs began teaching in 1951 following graduation from Chadron State College. After six years teaching at Rock County High School and two years in Guam, Tubbs came to Beatrice in 1959. While he was in Guam, Niel and a biology class he taught did a complete classification of flora and fauna of that country — something that had never been done. Tubbs taught a variety of classes, from basic science and math to chemistry, which took up the majority of his day. In 1979, Tubbs was one of 12 secondary science teachers in the U.S. to be selected as a guest of the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) for a week-long professional visit to observe and evaluate science education. He was also awarded the Presidential Award of Excellence in Science Teaching by the Nebraska State Board of Education in 1987. Tubbs’ wife Verna said her husband loved teaching and teaching chemistry in particular. “Niel started college without having any chemistry in high school,” Verna said. “It was hard for him, but he loved it and knew he had to work hard to master it.” Verna said it was his own experience with college chemistry that helped Niel empathize with the chemistry students in his classes. “I think that made him a better teacher, he gave them hours of his time,” she said. Tubbs was “never home from school before 5 p.m., often took his lunch hour and was there at 7 a.m. every day” to give students the extra tutelage to master chemistry, Verna said. Teaching chemistry was so much of a passion, Verna added, that Tubbs wrote a chemistry lab while at BHS and eventually turned it into a bound book. “It was a great book, it required a lot of work on the part of the instructor because of a lot of chemical mixtures that had to be made,” Verna said, which she adds may have turned some instructors off to the program. The hard work didn’t go unrecognized, however, as chemistry professors from surrounding colleges and universities knew they were being entrusted with good students from Tubbs’ teachings. “They knew when they had a student that came from Beatrice they had a chemistry student who was ready to go,” Verna said. The work Tubbs’ did in preparing students for college chemistry led him to receive two awards for teaching from the American Chemical Society. “He loved teaching,” Verna said.