Dr. Jim Ferrari: A Legacy of Curiosity

For 30 years, Dr. Jim Ferrari has encouraged Wesleyan College students to look a little closer - at the bird others might walk past, the story held within a fossil or the questions waiting to be discovered in the natural world around them.

Now, his decades of teaching, scholarship and service have been recognized with one of the College’s highest faculty honors. During Wesleyan’s 2026 Opening Convocation, Ferrari was named the inaugural holder of the Fuller E. Callaway Professorial Chair, an endowed teaching chair recognizing a faculty member whose teaching, scholarship and service represent the very best of the profession.

For Ferrari, who joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1996, the recognition came as an unexpected honor.

“I was just flattered and excited,” Ferrari said. “It was a wonderful surprise, and it’s a nice recognition.”

The honor arrives at a meaningful milestone in Ferrari’s career: his 30th year at Wesleyan.

Over those three decades, he has built a career defined not simply by teaching biology, but by helping generations of Wesleyan students become more curious about the world around them.

“Jim has taught our students biology, but that hardly captures it,” Provost Dr. Melody Blake shared while presenting the chair. “He has taught them to look.”

That philosophy is evident in Ferrari’s classroom, where even students who may not consider themselves “science people” are invited to see how science connects to their own interests and the larger world.

His environmental science courses, for example, bring together students from across disciplines, including education, fine arts and business. Ferrari sees those courses as an opportunity to help students recognize that addressing environmental challenges requires far more than scientists alone. Educators, policymakers, communicators, grant writers and professionals from many other fields all have a role to play.

It is also why, after three decades in the classroom, Ferrari continues looking for new ways to make learning interactive.

“Times change,” he said. “You have to change with the times and constantly ask yourself, ‘What’s going to grab their attention?’”

Recently, that question led him to fossils.

While on sabbatical, Ferrari expanded Wesleyan’s fossil collection and developed a new activity for his evolution students called “America’s Next Top Fossil.” Students researched fossils and made their case for which specimen Wesleyan should purchase. The winning pitch ultimately became part of the College’s collection.

For Ferrari, holding something millions of years old can transform an abstract scientific concept into something tangible.

“To me, it’s the reality of holding this thing in your hand that’s basically turned to a stone,” he said. “It’s mind-boggling how old it is, how ancient it is, and what it tells us about Earth’s history.”

That same commitment to learning beyond a textbook has taken Wesleyan students far beyond campus. Ferrari has led students to Belize and Costa Rica, mentored students through original research and watched them present their work and earn recognition at national conferences. Since 1998, he has also cared for Wesleyan’s Arboretum, transforming the campus itself into a living laboratory for teaching and research.

Ferrari’s commitment to teaching has earned recognition throughout his career, including the Quillian Distinguished Teaching Award twice, the Ann Munck Award, a Georgia Governor’s Teaching Fellowship and the Association of Southeastern Biologists Meritorious Teaching Award.

Yet even as he marks three decades at Wesleyan and receives one of the College’s highest faculty honors, Ferrari remains focused on what comes next.

In addition to teaching Environmental Science and Evolution, he is mentoring four students on new research this year, with plans for them to present their findings at a professional meeting in March.

“I think they’re going to knock it out of the park,” he said.

Ask Ferrari what he hopes generations of students remember, however, and his answer isn't a particular scientific principle, research project or discovery.

“Perhaps passing on some love and enthusiasm for the natural world,” Ferrari said. “I think everything else follows naturally.”

For Ferrari, that enthusiasm begins with curiosity.

“If they’re curious, they will be interested in learning,” he said. “I think the passion part trumps everything else.”

It is a philosophy that has shaped 30 years of teaching at Wesleyan: notice something you might otherwise overlook, ask another question, hold the fossil in your hand, step outside the classroom and keep looking.

And it is why, when Wesleyan sought the inaugural holder of the Fuller E. Callaway Professorial Chair, Ferrari was such a fitting choice.

As Provost Dr. Melody Blake told the Wesleyan community at Opening Convocation, “Jim Ferrari is what curiosity looks like across an entire career. He has made a life out of wonder, and then he has given that wonder away, to student after student, for thirty years.”