Professor Herrmann honored with excellence in teaching award

When Thomas Herrmann was 10 years old, his brother came home on military leave carrying the “Marine Corps Field First Aid Manual.” Without knowing it, he set young Herrmann on his career path, opening his eyes to the fact that someone could be injured but made better, if you knew what to do. “I could do this!” Herrmann remembers telling his brother.

A few years later, at age 13, Herrmann announced his intention to become a teacher when he told a panel at a statewide teachers’ conference—where he was a student representative—that he wanted to join the profession.  Why? “Because good teachers give kids confidence that they can do things.”

This year, in his 37^th year of teaching, Herrmann was awarded the A.B. “Dolly” Cohen Award for Excellence in Teaching, one of the University of Cincinnati’s highest honors, and one of only two faculty awards where the nominator must be a current student or an alumnus.  Herrmann is currently a professor-educator in the Department of Rehabilitation, Exercise & Nutrition Sciences in the College of Allied Health Sciences, and director of UC’s Master of Science in Athletic Training program.

“His encouragement and mentorship played a significant role in where I am today,” wrote Sarah Schwab, PhD, who nominated Herrmann for the award. Schwab is a former student, who had Herrmann five times as a teacher, and served as his teaching assistant for six semesters. 

“With his guidance, I gained valuable experience in teaching and research,” Schwab wrote. “My story is not unique; each year Dr. Herrmann provides countless students with opportunities to develop and recognize their full capabilities.”

Herrmann, an EdD, was initially hired as an athletic trainer in the UC Athletics Department in 1980, when he also served as an adjunct instructor in the College of Education. Five years later, he joined the faculty of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in the College of Medicine and taught there until 1998, before spending the next seven years in private physical therapy practice. He heeded a call back to teaching in 2005, when he was hired by the College of Allied Health Sciences and has been working there ever since. 

Through the years, Herrmann’s students have included undergraduates, graduate students in professional health care programs, medical students, resident physicians, musicians, athletes and industrial designers. 

“His passion for teaching and his innate ability to teach across disciplines are rare traits and demonstrate his primary teaching focus and commitment to the university and, more importantly, our students,” said Charity Accurso, PhD, interim dean of the College of Allied Health Sciences. “Dr. Herrmann fosters a student-centered environment for the growth and development of future allied health professionals.”

Herrmann led a six-year development process to successful national accreditation for UC’s Master of Science in Athletic Training program, wrote Kari Dunning, PhD, a colleague and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. 

“I have never worked with a more respectful, dedicated and humble teacher,” Dunning wrote. During his years on the faculty in CAHS, he helped develop two of UC’s fastest growing undergraduate programs, Health Sciences in CAHS and Medical Sciences in the College of Medicine.

He has an “exceptional feel for what it takes to not just pass a board exam, but rather for the rigor and understanding that is required to be a successful practicing therapist or trainer,” wrote Daniel Carl, PhD, one of his colleagues. 

Herrmann is known to be challenging and fair in the classroom and capable of breaking down complex topics into digestible pieces, his supporters wrote, doing so with common sense, humor and storytelling.

“Dr. Herrmann employs many creative approaches to teaching,” said former student Pierce Boyne, PhD. “He would often create experiments for the class to perform that would lead us to the concepts we needed to learn. This intuitive, hands-on, learning-by-discovery method forced me to know my equipment well and to work carefully so I would get the right answer.”

Students said Herrmann’s door is always open and he inspires confidence and critical thinking by telling his students, “We know more than we think we know.”

But he also fosters an environment where it is okay to fail, students wrote, as long as we learn from it. They appreciate that he recognizes there is a real world outside of the classroom and that it is important to see the person they are treating and not simply their diagnosis.

A good example of how Herrmann puts students first, Dunning wrote, was during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With four weeks of planning time, Herrmann volunteered to switch his primary semesters, revise his own courses to work online and teach courses he hadn’t previously taught—in order for students to graduate on time.

The Cohen Award is not about being a great colleague, but Herrmann is that, too, his peers wrote.

“Dr. Herrmann is a teacher of teachers, regularly mentoring new and ‘older’ faculty,” Dunning said. “We look to him for wisdom and humor and a good story that leads us to a better understanding of a situation. He is the wise elder of the department, loved and respected dearly.”

To Herrmann, teaching has been his life’s purpose. He has endeavored to be creative, versatile, available and useful, he said.

“My greatest reward as a teacher is when my students surpass me,” Herrmann said, “when they use what we’ve worked to learn to do something better than me.”