Obituary of Michael Douglas Wolter

After a three-month battle with cancer, well-known Indiana Physics Teacher, Mike Wolter, passed away on September 20. Mike taught his entire 38-year career in the Muncie Community School Corporation. He taught physics at Muncie Northside High School for 17 years, and when this school was closed in the fall of 1988, he was transferred to Muncie Central High School to replace his high school physics teacher. He remained the physics teacher there until his untimely death.

Mike graduated from Ball State University in 1969 with a Bachelors of Science degree in Education. Beginning in the summer of 1970, for three summers Mike attended summer school at the University of Minnesota under a National Science Foundation program to train physics teachers. As a result of that participation he received a Master of Education degree with a major in physics and minor in mathematics. Over the next several years, he completed a year beyond his masters degree by doing additional graduate work in physics at Ball State University.

In addition to serving his community as a high school physics teacher, Mike continued to positively impact and mentor many of his students as an adjunct faculty member in the Ball State University Department of Physics and Astronomy and as an adjunct faculty member for the Muncie campus of Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana. Mike’s commitment to his profession and to the training of new physics teachers was an inspiration to his students and colleagues.

Mike received awards for his excellence in teaching and for his service to the profession. In 1999, he was selected by the Indiana Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) as the Indiana High School Physics Teacher of the Year. In addition, he received a 2003 RadioShack National Science Teacher Award.

Mike was very active in the Indiana Section of the AAPT. He completed a three-year officer progression for the section from 2002 to 2005, serving as the organization’s president in 2005. In the spring of 2006 he was elected to serve a three-year term as the Indiana AAPT section representative to the AAPT’s national committee.

During the 2003-2004 school year Mike took a one-year sabbatical from the Muncie Community Schools to join the faculty of the Ball State University Physics and Astronomy Department as its Teacher in Residence (TIR). In this position he took the leadership for a component of the department’s Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) project by developing an Induction/Mentoring program for new teachers. In this position he was able to adapt his training as a state certified mentor to develop an induction and mentoring training manual for other TIR’s in the national PhysTEC project and for university physics faculty from across the nation.

A colleague from the University of Maryland, John Layman, who worked closely with Mike on this project, shared the following: “Mike’s contributions to the TIR program, especially the Induction and Mentoring Program and his Reference Manual (Characteristics of an Effective Mentoring Process), stand as our best examples of achievement in the project. Mike was a major role model for all of the work that we shared.”

Over the past several years, Mike gave numerous talks throughout the state and nation about mentoring new teachers. He possessed the scholarly and people skills that permitted him to work effectively with the national leaders in physics teacher preparation. Just two years ago he was appointed to the AAPT’s national Teacher Preparation Committee, and he had been selected to be the new committee chair for 2008, but his health problems prevented that from happening.

These accomplishments resulted in a Distinguished Service Award this past fall from his Indiana colleagues in the Indiana Section of AAPT and a Distinguished Service Citation award from the national AAPT. The latter award was officially delivered to Mike’s home five days prior to his passing.

Following are comments from the 2008 President –Elect of the national AAPT, Lila Adair, who praised his contributions: “Mike was a special person and will be missed by all. For those of you who did not know him, he was a hard working, dedicated teacher, who loved AAPT. I would have enjoyed working with him as your President and I will miss his smile and presence at our meetings. My sympathies go out to each of you who were his close friends and to his family.”