Office hours with the GOAT – Reza Nejat looks back on four decades of teaching, learning and leading with kindness

A story about Reza Nejat teaching his last class gets more likes, shares and comments than any other story published by the Faculty of Science in the last eight years. Current and former students, along with his colleagues, chime in and call Nejat a GOAT and a legend. Nejat’s heard that before – the first time, he asked his granddaughters why students were calling him a goat and not some other animal.

To see why Nejat – an associate professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy – is called the greatest, he agrees to meet.

His office has a view of the McMaster Nuclear Reactor where Nejat did a year-long sabbatical years before joining the university. The bookshelves in his office are jammed with physics textbooks. Even after four decades of teaching, he still leafed through the textbooks looking for new questions and equations to work into his lectures. Nejat’s co-authored one of the textbooks and he’s busy writing another – it’s his retirement project. “It’s going to be my legacy.”

Just minutes into the conversation, it’s obvious the GOAT should write another book about teaching, learning and leading with kindness.

Here’s some of what could go into that guaranteed bestseller.

If you were a student in Nejat’s class, he’d tell you there was one cardinal rule. A red line you could never cross. Yes, Nejat wanted you to have fun. “Physics is meant to be fun.” He’d encourage you to make fun of him – his accent, his moustache, his mannerisms and malaprops were all fair game. But you could never make fun of a classmate. You could not laugh, snort, smirk or roll your eyes when a student gave a wrong answer. If Nejat noticed your rudeness, he’d tell you to stand up. He’d ask you a physics question you had no chance of getting right. And then Nejat and the entire class would laugh at you. Nejat empathized with his students. He knew that you likely knew everyone in your elementary and secondary school classes. You grew up together. But at university, you’d be in classes where you knew no one – including his first-year physics classes. “For many students, that’s torture.” So Nejat made sure that everyone would be kind to each other. From kindness, friendships could follow.  If given the choice between being successful and being kind, Nejat would choose kindness without hesitation. He told his students to do the same. Nejat would make this the final lesson at the end of every course he taught, after modelling it himself throughout the term.

If you were a student who charged into his office challenging your mark on a test, Nejat would patiently listen. When you were finished, Nejat would tell you that he didn’t give you the mark – you gave that mark to yourself. He’d then ask what mark you were prepared to give yourself on the next test. He’d point to the blackboard in his office and invite you to write that mark and sign your name – a public pledge made in chalk. Many students made commitments to themselves over the years. One student wrote what mark she expected to get on a mid-term. A few weeks later, she walked into Nejat’s office (his door was always open) while he was meeting with another student. Without saying a word, she erased her mid-term pledge, wrote the mark she intended to earn for the final exam and left. Did she get the mark she wrote down? “I think so, yes,” says Nejat. “She also got the point I was trying to make.”

If you failed an exam, Nejat would say that both of you had failed. “Please come to my office. We need to talk.” He would then find a better way to teach so you could do a better job of learning. In class, Nejat would ask students about their marks. He’d ask who got an A and students would put up their hands. He’d asked who got a B. More hands went up. And then he’d ask who failed the test. Hands would still go up. A colleague who was sitting in on Nejat’s class was surprised not only that Nejat asked but that students put up their hands. “They trust you,” the colleague said.

If you were a teaching assistant in Nejat’s courses, you too had a cardinal rule. You could not spend your seminar standing at the front of the room writing out equations. This is not a copying class, Nejat would tell you. This is a learning class. So help your students learn. He would give you a bag of mini-whiteboards and markers. Students would get into small groups and huddle around a whiteboard. They’d work through the equations on their own, discussing and debating while you worked the room and helped out only when asked and needed. That, says Nejat, is the only way to teach and the best way for students to learn.

If you were a colleague, Nejat would knock on your office door, pop his head in and say hello. He never talked physics. He believes everyone needs a brain break. Not everyone appreciated the brain break at first. Nejat paid a visit to a colleague who didn’t get up from his chair, kept typing on his computer and only said “what?”. Nejat came back the next day. The colleague didn’t get up from his chair but stopped typing and didn’t say “what?”. On the third day, the colleague got up from his chair, crossed the room and joined Nejat in a conversation. Growing up in Iran, Nejat’s mother told him to check in on seven neighbours. Nejat said seven was a lot. Nejat’s mother said seven was the minimum and non-negotiable. Nejat would check in on many more than seven colleagues throughout his career.

If you were a new faculty member, Nejat would tell you to sit in your colleagues’ classes. Observe and draw inspiration from what you see. Watch how your colleagues teach and connect with their students. But never mimic what anyone else was doing. Always be yourself. He’d also tell you to be friendly with your students but never but never fool yourself into thinking you were their friend. “They are students. You are their professor.”

If you believed you were smarter than your students, Nejat couldn’t speak for your intelligence but would readily admit that he wasn’t sharper than any of the first-year students in his classes. Yes, after four decades of teaching, he had some wisdom and experience to draw on. “I know some stuff.” But he no longer had the brain of an 18-year-old. And those brains fire so much faster. “Students are unstoppable,” says Nejat. And yes, students today are not like students 40, 20 or even 10 years ago. Students aren’t the same, says Nejat. So we do we think we can get away with staying the same as we were 10, 20 or even 40 years ago?  Don’t expect or force students to think like you, says Nejat. We need to think like them. “They will keep you young,” says Nejat, who considers this the biggest and best perk of being a professor.

The conversation with Nejat is winding down. “I’ve talked too much,” says Nejat. Because he always welcomed debate and discussion in his classes, the 90-minute meeting ends with one last challenge. At the start of the meeting, Nejat says his textbook will be his legacy. But it will be much more than that – it’ll include the 35,000 students and his 1,000 TAs, who at the end of his classes, were better at physics and better people too.

This leads to one last story. Nejat, his wife, daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters were at the airport in Vienna waiting for their flight home home. It was during the final days of COVID and everyone was still wearing masks. Nejat was sitting near the terminal gate when someone tapped on his shoulder. He stood up and turned around. It was a former student. The student stepped back and pulled down his mask. “I looked over and just knew it was you,” said the former student. “I wanted to say thank you. You were a great teacher, my favourite at Mac.” His granddaughters jumped out their seats and started dancing. Their grandfather really was the GOAT.

Nejat gets up from his office chair, shakes hands and walks with me down the hall. He suddenly stops and apologizes for having not offered tea at the start of our meeting. I tell him no worries.

“So if I came to your office to chat, would you not offer me tea?”

And there it was – Nejat’s parting lesson in kindness.