Rossana Woo
Dr. Isidore “Izzy” Goodman, head of the chemistry department at Pierce College, was named Professor of the Year at the Academic Senate meeting on April 30.
The honor was awarded to Goodman by the Professional Growth and Development Committee headed by Kathy Oborn, political science and economics professor.
“I felt very honored,” Goodman said. “It’s nice to be appreciated for what I’ve done.”
It was working as a teaching assistant during graduate school that made Goodman realize he wanted to become a chemistry teacher.
“I really enjoyed being with students and teaching students. And I enjoyed my subject, which was biochemistry,” he said.
“That made me realize I would really like to do this as a career.”
During the committee’s report, Oborn along with Paul Nieman, director of facilities, presented the senate with a PowerPoint presentation chronicling Goodman’s life.
Starting with “Izzy’s early years” Nieman recounted Goodman’s early interest in chemistry growing up on a chicken farm in New Jersey.
At the age of 9, Goodman moved to New York where he later attended Stuyvesant High School in 1969.
Before that year, Stuyvesant High School was an all-boys school.
Nieman joked that the school became coed “due to Izzy’s magnetic personality, which they couldn’t keep the girls away from…so they decided to enroll them.”
Goodman later attended University of Albany, State University of New York, where he received his bachelor’s degree majoring in mathematics and minoring in chemistry and biology.
Leaving the east coast for Southern California, Goodman then attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning his Ph.D in biochemistry.
Tom Jukier, biochemistry major at Pierce, was in a biochemistry course where Goodman substituted once.
Jukier believes that Goodman is a very approachable professor who is knowledgeable in his field.
“Sometimes if my professor doesn’t have good office hours, I go to Professor Goodman and he’s always willing to help,” Jukier said.
Currently serving on the Educational Planning Committee as well as the Student Success Committee, Goodman was also the past Academic Senate president.
He is currently in his 23rd year of teaching at Pierce, since starting in 1984.