ABSTRACT
Great teachers come in many varieties, but Frank Beach was one of a kind. His first job after leaving graduate school at the University of Chicago in 1936 was as a research assistant in neuropsychology with Karl S.Lashley at Harvard University. A year later he moved to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Both jobs were free of teaching responsibilities. Thus in 1946 when he arrived at his third job as a professor of psychology at Yale University, he was completely unprepared for teaching. As he described it:
My first attempt at graduate teaching was a complete disaster. After twenty minutes of the first session I was perspiring excessively, my heart rate was accelerated, and waves of nausea threatened to overcome me. It was a classic case of stage fright. I dismissed the class, went home, and spent the rest of the day in bed. The situation improved with practice but the symptoms recurred in full force the first time I tried to lecture to an undergraduate class in comparative psychology. (Beach, 1974, p. 51)
Beach solved the problem of stage fright by limiting his subsequent teaching at Yale to seminars for graduate students and hand-picked undergraduates and research supervision-an approach made easier by his appointment as a Sterling Professor in 1950. He described his teaching load at Yale as “quite light and completely self-determined” (Beach, 1974, p. 52).
