Eight UD faculty members honored for teaching, advising
1:17 p.m., May 5, 2015--Eight members of the University of Delaware
faculty have been recognized for noteworthy performance in teaching and
advising, and three graduate students have received awards for
excellence in teaching.
The Excellence in Teaching and Excellence in Academic Undergraduate
Advising awards were presented at the May 4 meeting of the Faculty
Senate.
Based primarily on nominations from current and past students,
faculty excellence awards recognize those professors whose courses are
viewed as being thought-provoking, intellectually demanding, related to
other fields and touching on contemporary issues and student
experiences.
Awardees receive $5,000, have their portraits hung in the Morris
Library for five years and have bricks inscribed with their names
installed in Mentors Circle.
This years Excellence in Teaching Awards were presented to:
- Ralph Begleiter, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg
Professor of Communication at UD and the founding director of the Center
for Political Communication, in the College of Arts and Sciences;
- Guido Geerts, professor of accounting and management
information systems and Ernst and Young Faculty Scholar, in the Alfred
Lerner College of Business and Economics;
- Anthony Middlebrooks, associate professor in the
Organizational and Community Leadership Program in the School of Public
Policy and Administration, in the College of Arts and Sciences; and
- Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Womens
and Gender Studies and professor of humanities, in the College of Arts
and Sciences.
UDs Excellence in Undergraduate Academic Advising Award is based on
student nominations. Awardees receive $2,500 and also are honored with
bricks inscribed in Mentors Circle.
This years honorees are:
- Laura Eisenman, associate professor in the School of
Education and adviser for the interdisciplinary disabilities studies
minor, in the College of Education and Human Development;
- Thomas Kaminski, professor of kinesiology and applied
physiology, and director of undergraduate athletic training, in the
College of Health Sciences;
- Deborah Delaney, assistant professor of entomology and wildlife ecology, in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; and
- Cynthia Diefenbeck, assistant professor in the School of Nursing in the College of Health Sciences.
Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching Awards
Each recipient of the graduate student Excellence in Teaching Award receives $1,500. This years honorees are:
- Jessica Conrad, doctoral student in the Department of
English in the College of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of an Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation Short-term Fellowship at the Library Company of
Philadelphia;
- Kawin Thamtanajit, a doctoral student in the Department of Economics in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics; and
- Zachary Voras, doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Award recipients shared their thoughts about teaching and advising with UDaily. Excerpts from their responses are printed below.
Excellence in Teaching
Ralph Begleiter: My overarching teaching goal throughout my
16 years here has been to expose UD students to other cultural and
political perspectives than the ones to which were all accustomed at
home. Ive discovered over the past decade and a half at UD that many of
the students in my classes are eager to learn, enthusiastic about
exposing themselves to topics they might not have discovered on their
own, and feel strongly rewarded when they come away with new insights,
different perspectives on themselves, their culture and our politics and
media.
Guido Geerts: I am blessed with top-notch students who like
to be challenged and are eager to learn. This makes teaching enjoyable
and easy. Students come to class to learn, not to listen, so I encourage
interaction with a focus on problem solving, while mixing a number of
pedagogies so that students learn the same materials in different ways.
As a teacher, my goals are to make sure students learn some core
principles to the subject so they can apply these to a wide variety of
problems in different contexts and to make sure that what they learn is
relevant.
Anthony Middlebrooks: I believe a university education should
be about expanding perspectives and inspiring future learning. Although
each class has educational objectives, underlying those are my goals to
help students develop the mental habits and capacities that will serve
them well long after my class. I generally find my students open to new
ideas and perspectives, highly involved and hopeful about the future.
When given the right culture and tools and a bit of a push students
will consistently surprise themselves.
Margaret Stetz: My goal is always to encourage students to
see the interconnectedness of ideas and action and to develop critical
thinking that will enable them to accomplish whatever goals they
identify as worth pursuing. I live to hear students say, I never
thought about that before. Life does not divide neatly into
disciplinary packages, and neither do the ideas and materials that I
bring to the undergraduate classroom. Only by crossing intellectual
divides can we both prepare students to understand the world that they
will be entering and equip them to shape it in positive ways.
Excellence in undergraduate advising
Laura Eisenman: My primary goal, especially with the minor in
disabilities studies, is to support students in finding opportunities
to learn about disability from different perspectives in ways that
advance their professional and personal goals. As an adviser, it
involves being responsive in a timely way when students reach out,
listening and sharing knowledge about resources in and outside of the
University. I enjoy talking to students about their plans for the future
and thinking with them about the possibilities ahead as well as
opportunities in which they can get involved while at UD.
Thomas Kaminski: Our students, like most college-aged
students, have many influences in their lives and therefore they have a
tendency to change their line of reasoning and plans several times
throughout their academic careers. Having the patience to understand
that this is bound to happen enables me to be a good listener and
support system as they try to navigate their careers away from UD.
Advising for me never stops. I am in constant contact with our alumni,
many of whom still call on me for professional and career advice
regardless of how far removed they are from their UD undergraduate or
graduate experience.
Deborah Delaney: Being an adviser is the most challenging
part of my job at UD, and it requires me to get to know each of my
students and understand how I can mentor them. Each student is so
different and blessed with different gifts. Being a mentor also is the
most rewarding part of my job, and watching a student grow and become
more confident is the best. Being able to be a supportive and
encouraging voice to the future generations in the field of entomology
is an honor. Insects are just so cool!
Cynthia Diefenbeck: My most enjoyable connections are those
students who participate actively in the advisement and mentoring
process. I also enjoy students who bring unique life circumstances or
challenges they are attempting to overcome. I have the utmost respect
for students who are bettering themselves not just academically, but
also personally. I know that I am doing my small part in helping make a
difference not just for themselves, but for future generations.
Excellence in graduate teaching
Kawin Thamtanajit: Being friendly and easy-going is the
approach I use to connect with my students, so none of them will be
afraid to come for help and to ask questions during office hours. I
would like to see my students develop economic intuition, because this
is something that is very simple, but useful. It allows students to
understand and be able to explain many economic activities or phenomena
that are happening in their daily lives. If my students can develop even
a tiny bit of intuition after taking my class, I would feel that I have
done my job.
Zachary Voras: I consider my role as a teaching assistant to
transfer the material learned in a textbook into a real world and
laboratory environment application. I always hope that students, if
nothing else, gain a sense of intuition toward experimental practices.
As an analytical chemist, I find it is necessary to realize the parts of
an experiment that require control and prudence toward safe and
effective laboratory technique. If the students are able to detail and
understand the important portions of an experiment, I consider my time
successful.
Jessica Conrad: In my class, as in the academy, we often talk
about how researching and reading scholarly articles is partaking in
the conversation surrounding an issue, and it continues as students
read, write, read further and rewrite. Its not just cumulative
knowledge that allows them to write intelligently, its the
transformative understanding of an issue that allows students to make
real sense of it, for themselves and for their audience. Its the
appreciation of learning as a recursive process that, I think, will
empower students to be critical, conscientious citizen scholars.
Article by Jerry Rhodes
Photographs by Ambre Alexander Payne, Evan Krape and Kathy F. Atkinson
Originally published by UDaily
