UW Distinguished Teaching Awards to A&S Faculty
Ana Marie Cauce, David Collingwood, Anthony Gill, Resat Kasaba, and June Morita
TAs Honored for Teaching Excellence
David Shapiro and Pamela Ralston
Al Black Recognized for Public Services
Tom Burritt Receives Staff Awards
A Surprise Ph.D. for Charles Johnson
Kenneth Pyle Decorated by Japanese Emperor
Listing of Additional A&S Awards and Honors

A&S Faculty Honored for Distinguished Teaching
With its Distinguished Teaching Award, the UW Alumni Association honors a handful of faculty each year for their exceptional teaching. This year, nearly all of the honorees--selected on the basis of recommendations from colleagues and students--are based in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Resat Kasaba: Awakening Students' Curiosity
Resat Kasaba, associate professor of international studies, is described by one colleague--a previous Distinguished Teaching Award recipient--as "one of the great teachers the University of Washington has had in the last generation." Kasaba's students couldn't agree more.

	Resat Kasaba

"Among students, 'Kasaba humor' and 'Kasaba kindness' are legendary," explains an undergraduate who took a large lecture course from Kasaba. "...Every day, all 200 students would sit with rapt attention, listening intently to subjects I never would have dreamed could be made interesting and relevant. ...At the end of class, all 200 students would wake as if from a dream."

A graduate student had a similar reaction. "[Kasaba] had an extraordinary knack for awakening our curiosity and an enthusiasm for the quest for answers," she recalls. "...He has been a catalyst for the transformation of countless students, including myself."

Both students remember going through withdrawal at the end of their Kasaba courses. "As he walked out of the room, having given his final lecture, we all looked at each other rather bewilderedly," explains the graduate student. "In that moment, we realized what an extraordinary teacher we had experienced. ...Hoping that he had retreated to his office, all of us hurried over [there], knocked on his door, and gave him a round of applause as he opened it. His surprised face turned a deep red."

Anthony Gill: Once a Novice, Now a Mentor
Anthony Gill, assistant professor of political science, is also lauded by students for his teaching. But that wasn't always the case. Gill's first few teaching evaluations were less than positive, prompting him to seek advice from other faculty in the department.

One colleague recalls that Gill not only met with him at length and sat in on his class but also spoke with other experienced teachers in an effort to improve his teaching. "You can already guess the end of the story: wow!" says the colleague. "Gill worked extremely hard to transform his undergraduate courses...and succeeded in producing a series of the best and most popular courses at the UW. No one has ever worked harder to improve as a teacher, and no one to my knowledge has ever succeeded to this astonishing degree."

Students will be forever grateful for Gill's transformation. One doctoral candidate says, "Few professors stand out as truly remarkable teachers. Professor Gill is a noticeable exception. ...[He] has the unique gift of teaching more in a few class meetings than some professors are able to accomplish in a whole quarter."

Anthony Gill and Ana Mari Cauce. Photo by Mary Levin.

Undergraduates also appreciate Gill's accessibility, citing his weekly "Kaffee Klatsche" as one example. The Klatsche is an informal gathering that Gill holds each week at By George, a campus cafeteria. Over coffee, he meets with interested students to discuss topics presented in class or, as one student puts it, to "simply talk politics."

In a wonderful turn of events, Gill, who once sought mentors to improve his teaching, is now serving as a mentor to other faculty. "Many [junior faculty] have told me that his counsel about improving classroom teaching.has been extremely helpful," says a colleague. "In fact, one recently tenured colleague gives Tony almost full credit for radically improving his teaching effectiveness . . . in a very short time."

Ana Mari Cauce: A Lab Filled with Students
"I don't think of teaching as something that you do," says Ana Mari Cauce, chair of the Department of American Ethnic Studies and professor of psychology. "A teacher is something you are." That attitude has made Cauce a favorite of both faculty and students since her arrival at the UW in 1986.

"I have never met a faculty member who was more egalitarian and concerned about the welfare of her students," comments one of Cauce's students. A colleague adds, "The sheer volume of students whose lives she has touched through small classes and personal mentoring is staggering. She is tremendously energetic and generous with her time."

Cauce is also generous with research opportunities. She has up to twenty undergraduates participating in her research at any one time, working shoulder to shoulder with more advanced students, serving as co-authors on the resulting publications, and presenting results at scientific meetings.

"Every single position that I've ever hired for has been filled by someone who is a student, whether an undergraduate, a graduate student, a post-doc, or someone in between," says Cauce. "In the same way that I see the classroom as an extension of my lab, I view my lab as an extension of the classroom."

June Morita: Bringing Statistics to Life
June Morita, lecturer in the School of Business and Department of Statistics, has received numerous honors for her skillful teaching. But even talented teachers can falter when teaching courses in statistics. Not Morita.

"Statistics courses tend to be challenging to teach," admits Werner Stuetzle, chair of the Department of Statistics. "Students often take them because they have to, not because of genuine interest, and the material lends itself to being presented in a dry and abstract fashion. June has risen to the challenge."

The key to her success, explains one of her students, is her ability to connect abstract mathematical ideas with "the real world" through simple experiments and activities in class. Because of her approach, says the student, "I always looked forward to her class."

Such comments are no surprise to a colleague who met with students in Morita's statistics class. "Many students said [this] was the best class they had ever taken," he says. "One student spoke movingly about June as a role model for the kind of teacher it's possible to be: one who can combine excellent knowledge of the material with outstanding organization and an unflagging respect for students."

	June Morita and David Collingwood. Photo by Mary Levin.

UW students are not the only ones to benefit from Morita's teaching excellence. She also has organized quantitative literacy training for elementary school teachers and has taught mathematics lessons and advised teachers at local K-12 schools on a voluntary basis.

David Collingwood: A New Approach to Precalculus
Ten years ago the math faculty set out to revise its gateway course in precalculus, taught in massive lecture classes of up to 700 undergraduates. To better prepare students for the mathematical modeling they'd encounter in calculus, the course content was refocused onto "word problems" and real-life applications.

That's when David Collingwood, professor of mathematics, stepped in, volunteering to turn a large but unstructured collection of problems into a textbook. By the time he finished, he'd accomplished much more.

Collingwood convinced the department to reduce class size to 160 students. He organized weekly meetings for all instructors to discuss teaching strategies and materials. And he introduced role-playing exercises to help graduate teaching assistants prepare to lead their own classes. For the past four years, Collingwood also has repeatedly revised the textbook, actively seeking critiques and incorporating suggestions from everyone in the department--faculty, teaching assistants, and students alike.

The result? Students are learning more since the precalculus course was revised, with 76 percent now passing the subsequent calculus course compared to only 7 percent passing a decade ago. Student ratings for the course instructors are significantly higher as well.

That Collingwood put so much effort into this endeavor makes sense to students who have taken his courses. A former graduate student explains, "It is unusual for a professor to become personally invested in his students' learning, but Professor Collingwood does so without reser-vation. His respect for students and his faith in their abilities is phenomenal. Students recognize his commitment and respond with increased confidence and motivation."

TAs Honored for Teaching Excellence
Although Pamela Ralston and David Shapiro are still working toward their Ph.D. degrees, they already are accomplished teachers. This year, they have received the University's Award for Teaching Excellence, awarded annually to outstanding UW teaching assistants.

	David Shapiro and Pamela Ralson. Photo by Kathy Sauber.

In his philosophy courses, Shapiro helps students see how philosophy applies to real life. He has used the state voter's pamphlet as a focal text in a course on contemporary moral problems, building the course around controversial ballot measures such as abortion, drug legalization, and euthanasia.

Shapiro also introduces classroom exercises, structured as quiz games and team competitions, that ask students to apply classic and contemporary theories from philosophers to examples in their own lives. And his courses incorporate service learning, through which students volunteer at community organizations to see how theoretical issues such as social justice, poverty, and environmental stewardship play out in the real world.

As education director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children, Shapiro himself regularly volunteers in Seattle public schools, engaging grade- and middle-school students in philosophical discussions.

Ralston, a teaching associate in Comparative Literature, is meticulous in her course preparation and excels at drawing students into energetic and challenging discussions. She helps students understand what a given work of literature has to say to its readers, and she helps them discover that they have something to say in response.

When feelings run strong--as they often do with material that explores cultural, racial, and ethnic experiences--Ralston is a skilled discussion leader. She sets a high standard for respectful, spirited, and thoughtful discourse, and she holds students accountable for maintaining those standards.

"She is an incredible inspiration," says an undergraduate who took one of Ralston's courses. "Through her guidance I have decided to pursue a teaching career. I can only hope to be a fraction of the person and teacher that she is today."

Al Black Recognized for Public Service
Albert W. Black, Jr., senior lecturer in sociology, won the coveted UW Distinguished Teaching Award in 1979. Now he has earned two more top honors: the Outstanding Public Service Award presented by the UW Alumni Association, and the Charles E. Odegaard Award presented by the UW's Office of Minority Affairs.

Al Black. Photo by Kathy Sauber.

Black's special interests include race and ethnic relations, stratification, social movements, and race and poverty. He not only inspires his students to explore complex issues related to race but also volunteers countless hours in the community--as a sociologist, mentor, curriculum developer, grassroots organizer, concerned citizen, and more--to promote the welfare of young people.

Black has been exceptionally effective motivating youths to make constructive choices about their lives. He's also reached out to parents. From 1994-96, he organized the Franklin Fathers Group at Seattle's Franklin High School, through which parents have become a unified, highly visible presence in the school to encourage low-performing students to take their education seriously. More recently, Black and his family have formed a new organization, the Franklin Black Parents Association, to address the issue of academic disproportionality in the Seattle Public Schools.

Bringing together his academic and community work, Black also has organized a steady stream of UW students to work alongside class-room teachers as mentors and tutors to K-12 students.

Burritt Receives Staff Award
When colleagues describe Tom Burritt, a research engineer in the Department of Physics, they speak effusively of his creative solutions to difficult problems. Now that ingenuity has garnered Burritt a UW Distinguished Staff Award.

Tom Burritt. Photo by Kathy Sauber.

Burritt's work involves the design and construction of special equipment and instrumentation for experimental nuclear and particle physics. A UW professor working on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory project comments that "at every turn, Tom has created astonishing innovations. ...Such creativity might suggest a slow output. On the contrary, Tom works at a prodigious rate, delivering everything on schedule, sometimes even before we realized we needed it."

Burritt's skills are no secret within the particle physics community. His reputation for coming up with creative solutions has earned him international respect. "On one occasion, I overheard a conversation between principal investigators," recalls a graduate student involved with the Neutrino Observatory project. "In response to the deepening concern of one that 'we are losing $10,000 per day and we are not solving this problem,' the other responded with 'let's see if we can get Tom Burritt from the UW to visit.'"

Colleagues also describe Burritt as a "team player" who is flexible and willing to interrupt his own work to help others.

A Surprise Ph.D. for Johnson
Charles Johnson, S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Endowed Professor of Creative Writing, recently returned to the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook to receive an honorary doctorate. The honor was not surprising given Johnson's stellar career, which includes a National Book Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. But Johnson came home with more than he expected.

After accepting the honorary degree, he was asked to stand up again to receive something else: his Ph.D. in Philosophy, post dated to May 15, 1988. It seems Johnson, a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook in the late 1970s, never finished his dissertation. He left Stony Brook to take a job in the UW's Creative Writing Program, for which a master of fine arts is the terminal degree.

Without his knowledge, officials at SUNY Stony Brook decided that Johnson's sixth book, Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970, should be accepted as his dissertation and back dated his Ph.D. degree to coincide with the book's publication.

"It almost brought tears to my eyes," recalls Johnson. "I've wanted that degree since I was 18. I had done all the work, had passed the exams. The faculty at Stony Brook have returned to me one of the great dreams of my life."

Pyle Decorated by Japanese Emperor
In April, Kenneth Pyle, professor of history and East Asian studies, received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, from the Consul General Yoshio Nomoto on behalf of the emperor of Japan. The decoration is the second highest honor of its kind presented by the Japanese government.

Pyle was selected for the honor "in recognition of his contributions to the promotion of research of modern Japanese history and support of cultural exchange between Japan and the United States."

Pyle has written 13 books and 67 articles related to Japan. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Japanese Studies, and served as director of the UW's Jackson School of International Studies from 1977 to 1988. He also chaired the Japan-U.S. Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange, the official bilateral organization founded in 1962 by President Kennedy and Prime Minister Ikeda.

"He just stands out," says Marie Anchordoguy, associate professor of East Asian studies. "There's only a handful of people like him who have given so much time to U.S.-Japan relations. He is extremely well-respected on both sides, and to pull that off is not easy given the various trade ad defense problems over the past few decades."

The Order of the Rising Sun was introduced in 1873 but was suspended during World War II. The decoration was not extended again until 1970.

Additional Awards and Honors

Gerald Baldasty, professor of communications, received the Best Faculty Award and the Outstanding Paper Award from the American Journalism Historians' Association.

William Boltz, Taiping Chang, and David Knechtges, professors of Asian languages and literature, have been selected fellows of the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo.

Chris Burdzy, professor of mathematics, has been appointed a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Weston Borden, professor of chemistry, was named associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Leah Ceccarelli, assistant professor of speech communications, has received a summer stipend award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Robert Dahlstrom and Bill Forrester, professors of drama, and Professor Emeritus Jack Wolcott, were awarded a Northwest Drama Conference Teaching Recognition Award.

David Domke, assistant professor of communications, won the Catherine Covert Award for outstanding article in journalism and mass communication history from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Joseph Felsenstein, professor of genetics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

The Department of Geography has been selected to receive a 1999 Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence for its contributions to the University's teaching mission.

Mark Ghiorso, chair and professor of geological sciences, was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Susan Hanley, professor of history, won the 1999 John W. Hall Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for her book, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan.

Thomas Hankins, professor of history, received the George Sarton Medal from the History of Science Society for lifetime achievement as a historian of science.

Wick Haxton, professor of physics and director of the Institute for Nuclear Physics, was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stephen Jaeger, professor of Germanics and acting director of the Center for the Humanities, has been appointed a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies at Princeton University for 1999-2000, with National Endowment for the Humanities support.

Conway Leovy, professor of atmospheric sciences, has been named the Haurwitz Memorial Lecturer of the American Meteorological Society.

Marsha Linehan, professor of psychology, has received several honors: the Louis I. Dublin Award from the American Association of Suicidology; Distinguished Researcher in Suicide from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention; Visiting Professor on suicide at Columbia University, Rodd D. Brickell Foundation; and a Senior Scientist Award from the National Institutes of Mental Health.

James Mayer, professor of chemistry, has been named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Patricia Moy, assistant professor of communications, won the Top Student Paper Award (with D. A. Scheufele) in the Fellows Student Paper Competition at the annual convention of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research.

Scott Noegel, assistant professor of Near Eastern languages and civilization, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his cable arts series, OffLine.

Robert Paine, professor emeritus of zoology, has been elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Oleg Prezhdo, assistant professor of chemistry, received the New Faculty Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the Research Innovation Award from Research Corporation.

Thomas Pressly, professor emeritus of history, received the 1999 "Good in Government" Award from the Washington State League of Women Voters in recognition of his work encouraging the excellent teaching of history in K-12 schools.

Philip Reid, assistant professor of chemistry, has received a 1999 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and was named Cottrell Scholar by Research Corporation.

Peter Rhines, professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

R.T. Rockafellar, professor of mathematics, has received the Von Neuman Prize from the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science and was honored as Doctor honoris causa by the University of Chile in Santiago.

Richard Salomon and Collett Cox, professors of Asian languages and literature, have received a three-year National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support their translation and study of the Gandhari Buddhist manuscripts.

Leroy Searle, professor of English, has received a summer stipend award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Saraswati Sunindyo, assistant professor of women studies, has been named the first Association of Pacific Rim Universities Fellow from the UW.

France Winddance Twine, assistant professor of international studies and women studies, has been awarded an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

John M. Wallace, professor of atmospheric sciences, received the Revelle Medal of the American Geophysical Union and was selected as the Symons Memorial Lecturer of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Brannon Wheeler, assistant professor of Near Eastern languages and civilization, has been awarded research fellowships from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) and the American Institute of Maghreb Studies. He will spend Spring 2000 as Senior Islamist-in-Residence at ARCE.

Deborah Wiegand, senior lecturer in chemistry, received a PEW Scholar Award from the Carnegie Foundation in recognition of scholarly work in teaching.

Younan Xia, assistant professor of chemistry, received the LaMer Prize of the American Chemical Society Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. The award recognizes an outstanding Ph.D. thesis accepted by a U.S. or Canadian university.

Anne Yue, professor of Asian languages and literature, has been elected president of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics.

[Summer 1999 - Table of Contents]