Yavapai College student Tyler Briner knew something was different -- something was special --  about his anatomy and physiology (A&P) professor when, struggling with a concept, that professor invited him to a Saturday study session.

The session lasted four hours and by the end, Tyler was no longer in the dark about synapse – the communication in the body between neurons.

“It was life-changing – oh my god that somebody actually believed in me,” Briner recalled of the study session and how Dr. Mark Muchna “made sure I understood what was happening in the body.”

Tyler was so struck by Muchna’s caring and his gift of time, he nominated him for the college’s highest employee award, the S.A.M., award. The acronym stands for see, adapt and measure, a key principle of the Outward Mindset that the college community embraces to engender a positive workplace culture.

Muchna won the award and earlier this year, the college’s Employee of the Year award as well, because of Tyler’s and others’ accolades.

Now a  second-semester nursing student, Tyler said his YC classmates all “have nothing but great things to say” about Muchna, a former veterinarian whose foray into higher education was somewhat accidental if not serendipitous.

Muchna was a practicing veterinarian and teaching youth Bible school at a local church when his co-teacher at the time, Dean Holbrook, asked if he’d considered teaching at Yavapai College. Holbrook, a former math professor and now an associate dean at YC, said he saw in Muchna an uncanny ability to explain material and connect with his young Bible students.

Muchna, who at the time was contemplating giving up veterinary care and the 60-hour work weeks  and emergency-response duties that go with it, applied for and won an adjunct position teaching A&P at YC in 2010. “For a while, he was trying to do both things, (veterinary care and teaching), but you could tell he was falling in love with teaching,” Holbrook said.

Two years later, after filling in full time for an A&P professor who abruptly left the college, Muchna earned a promotion to full-time faculty.  “This was what his next career was supposed to be. I think it has been a great fit for him. His top priority is the students,” Holbrook said.

Fast forward 12 years: Muchna deeply appreciates the Employee of the Year Award and is humbled by it, but deems others more deserving. “I know there are others here at the college who are better teachers than myself and who have given more to the college outside the classroom,” Muchna said. “I am still growing as a teacher.”

Because Muchna is on sabbatical this semester, it took some convincing to get him to attend Convocation in early August where the Employee of the Year award was announced and bestowed by YC President Dr. Lisa Rhine amid much cheering and applause.

Muchna’s sabbatical will take him across Arizona to multiple college A&P labs. His aim: Discover and document new tools and teaching methods to incorporate in YC science classrooms to advance student success. “Hopefully it will bear good fruit,” he said of his research. “I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also looking forward to getting back into the classroom. I enjoy coming to work.”

Muchna’s affinity for creatures of all sorts, especially reptiles and amphibians, revealed itself while growing up in a Chicago suburb. He studied biology and later earned a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois. After graduation, he put his passion and skills to work for a mixed-animal veterinary practice in Iowa. “In the morning, I would get in my vet truck and go to farms working primarily with cattle and pigs, but also the occasional sheep or horse. Then, in the afternoon, I would go to one of our clinics to work with dogs and cats. Being in a rural area, without specialists or emergency clinics nearby, the job demanded long hours and being on call weekends and nights. I did this for fifteen years,” Muchna recalled of his early veterinary career.

During those 15 years, Muchna and his wife, Carolyn, welcomed four children, Jessica, Amy, Matthew and Mollie. The family later moved to Mississippi, where Muchna spent a year working with catfish farmers while interning at Mississippi State University. When the internship ended, Muchna moved his family to Prescott and began working at a local small-animal clinic.

“I’d always enjoyed the West. My grandparents lived out here when I was growing up,” he said.

Muchna is grateful to have found a second calling at YC. “I have really enjoyed being a community college teacher as my second career. I enjoy my colleagues… the creative aspect of teaching and the variety of ages of students we have here at YC.  I also enjoy the subject I teach -- the truly amazing human body.”

Muchna acknowledged that A&P is a difficult course yet necessary for aspiring nurses, radiologic technologists, paramedics and many other career tracks offered at YC. “It’s like learning a foreign language… there’s a lot of raw learning of what’s there (in the body) and how it works. I love it when students get it, do well and are successful.”

The bottom line, according to Holbrook and Tyler, is that Muchna genuinely cares about his students.

“And they all know it because it just oozes out of every part of him,” Holbrook said.

“Without his steadfast dedication to education, I'm not sure I would be where I am currently,” Tyler said.