UCSC Staff Honored

Twelve UCSC Instructors, Ten Teaching Assistants Honored For Excellence In The Classroom

SANTA CRUZ, CA–In a ceremony at UC Santa Cruz, 12 instructors (faculty and lecturers) and 10 teaching assistants have been recognized for excellence in the classroom. This year’s Excellence in Teaching Awards were presented by Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood and Jaye Padgett, chair of the Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching, at University House on May 25. They were also announced at the final Academic Senate meeting of the year today (May 30).

The selections are made by the UCSC Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching. The winners–and the comments on their certificates–are:

• Professor Frank Andrews of Chemistry: For sparkling enthusiasm and passionate commitment to undergraduate education, genuine interest in students’ well-being and progress, and tireless listening, helping, and sharing with others in environments where the best of human nature is brought to the fore, fostered, extended, and rewarded.
• Lecturer Jeremy Elkins of Legal Studies: For transformative teaching that leads students up mountains they never knew existed and keeps them excited about the journey, even at its most difficult, always challenging them to think independently and analytically, and for nearly single-handed creation of the Legal Studies Program.
• Professor Dana Frank of American Studies: For unfailing dedication to social justice, democracy, and equality in classrooms where no student is lost or hidden but all are celebrated, nurtured, and challenged to go above and beyond what they think they are capable of achieving, and for striving to live and model classroom ideals.
• Professor Frank Galuszka of Art: For generous spirit, compelling presence, and profound dedication to the field of art, for a thoughtful, conscious approach to teaching that encourages students to witness their own learning and that of others as they link personal disposition and a body of knowledge in the paradoxical object that is the work of art.
• Assistant Professor Jody Greene of Literature: For unabashed enthusiasm for the material she presents, a palpable love of teaching, a strong capacity to convey what is exciting, poignant, and worth exploring in a text, and an approach to pedagogy as thought experiments, designed to cultivate new knowledges instead of mastering old ones.
• Lecturer Conn Hallinan of Writing: For passion about journalism and about teaching, for viewing writing as a profoundly intellectual process requiring new ways of thinking and looking at the world, and for caring deeply about students’ learning.
• Professor Jorge Hankamer of Linguistics: For infectious energy and enthusiasm for linguistics, singular dedication to teaching, and a philosophy of learning that leads students into direct confrontation with linguistic data and motivates them to solve problems for themselves.
• Professor Charles McDowell of Computer Science: For rigorous, innovative, enthusiastic, sensitive instruction in computer science and openness and receptivity to new ideas and better ways to teach in classrooms emphasizing inquiry, experimentation, interactive learning, and the demystification of computers.
• Lecturer Daniel Palleros of Chemistry: For genuine engagement, fairness, patience, and warmth, and the rare ability to make a complex subject seem simple and accessible, for creating an atmosphere of openness where new ideas can flourish, and for opening doors and letting the students find their way.
• Lecturer Robert Shepherd of Economics: For a passion for students generously expressed through mentoring and friendship, for bringing life to the subject of accounting through enthusiasm, commitment, humor, and ties to the real world, for opening doors to the future and thriving upon students’ success.
• Professor Michael Urban of Politics: For generously sharing his passion for politics, Russian studies, and learning, for leading students into a mysterious world to solve human puzzles that stretch their intellectual horizons and their own interiors, and for treating undergraduates as equals in all respects.
• Assistant Professor Karen Tei Yamashita of Literature: For openness and commitment to students and their own unique talents, for guiding students through the labyrinth of fiction and fiction writing, and for engaging them in personal epiphanies about the nature of society, the means for expressing it, and the important work that literary narrative accomplishes.

Teaching assistant winners were selected by the Graduate Council and received stipends of $100 each. Recipients are: Sarah Gerhardt, Chemistry; Joshua Gray, Physics; Jonathan Keesey, Anthropology; Emily Klein, Literature; Wendy Minkoff, History of Consciousness; Daniel Morgali, Mathematics; Stacy Ropp, Psychology; Robert Sanders, Linguistics; Rashmi Shankar, Economics; and Joel Wilson, History