Awards
| UW Distinguished Teaching Awards | |
| TAs Receive Excellence in Teaching Awards | |
| Additional UW Recognition Awards | |
| Other Awards, Honors, and Professorships |
Each year, the University of Washington honors faculty, staff, teaching assistants, students, alumni, and programs for exceptional dedication and innovation. Recipients from the College of Arts & Sciences are highlighted on the following pages. These stories are excerpted from University Week’s June award supplement, Best and Brightest 2008.
 |
|
| UW Distinguished Teaching Award recipients for 2008 include four A&S faculty (from left): Rebecca Aanerud, Jamie Walker, Ben Kerr, and Jaime Olavarria. Photo by Karen Orders. |
|
Distinguished Teaching Award for A&S Top Teachers
The UW Distinguished Teaching Award honors faculty who show a mastery of their subject matter, intellectual rigor, lively curiosity, a commitment to research, and a passion for teaching. Four Arts and Sciences faculty are among the recipients for 2008.
Jamie Walker
Professor, Ceramics, School of Art
It’s tempting to think of a beginning art class as a place to learn basic technique and not think too much about self expression, but Jamie Walker doesn’t see it that way.
“In a beginning class, the skill level is never going to be that high,” he says, “but one of my goals is that by the end of the quarter students should have work that is their work, rather than just a bunch of anonymous pots. I want my students to get personally engaged with their projects so they get a sense of excitement out of even a beginning class.”
It was that sense of excitement that drew Walker himself to art. He was in high school when his brother arrived home from college one day and found him watching television. Disgusted, the brother told Walker to get off the sofa and do something meaningful with his life. That translated into a lesson on the family’s pottery wheel and an introduction to a high school teacher who also happened to be a gifted artist.
“Then I found that art was something I was willing to spend a lot of time at, and it helped focus me in ways that other things weren’t able to,” Walker says.
He came to the UW intending to major in history while continuing his art as an avocation. But he found mentors in the School of Art—Howard Kottler, Patti Warashina, and especially Bob Sperry. “They were adults, they had real lives and they were very interesting artists,” he says of them. “At a certain point I looked at them, and their example gave me the encouragement to pursue my true passion.”
Walker wound up with a double major in art and history, then went on to the Rhode Island School of Design for a Master of Fine Arts. He spent six years as an independent artist and began teaching in California before returning to the UW as a faculty member in 1989. Since then, he’s devoted himself to students while continuing his own work.
Judi Clark, the School of Art’s director of academic advising, writes of Walker, “I have spent 17 years listening to students express their admiration and respect for [him]. I wish that each of these students was here to tell the story of how his teaching, mentoring, and friendship changed their lives forever.”
According to Walker, some of the biggest changes have come through the Studio Art Program in Rome, through which students work in the UW studios at the Palazzo Pio in Rome and spend a quarter exploring the city. Walker created the program and serves as director.
“Students are away from what they’re comfortable with and they’re focused on their courses and their artwork,” says Walker, “so you see a level of development that is a giant leap in a couple of months.”
Walker also created a freshman-level class that introduces students to contemporary issues in the world of visual arts and design. And right now, he and his colleagues in ceramics, sculpture, public art, and glass are starting a collaborative program, 3D4M, in which they are co-teaching and sharing resources.
“My biggest fear is that I’ll become bored with teaching,” Walker says. “I’ve kept that from happening by trying new things.”
Jaime Olavarria
Associate Professor, Psychology
As a youth in Chile, Jaime Olavarria pondered the big questions: Why are humans different from animals? Why do we have self-awareness? How do our brains enable us to do the things we do? Today he remains no less curious about our role in the world. And though he’s an active researcher, he has also become an innovative and effective teacher.
“They put me in front of students and I discovered I was able to turn the situation into something fun for me, and entertaining,” he says. “I get a little bit transformed.”
Olavarria’s students seem transformed as well. Some point to his skill in teaching them how to design experiments and write scientific papers; others describe his creativity in the classroom. “Jaime consistently rates among the top performers both in terms of the amount of teaching he does, and in the high rating he receives from students,” writes Sean O’Donnell, a fellow associate professor in psychology.
Olavarria was raised in the small Chilean city of Puerto Montt, where his father taught elementary school and his mother owned a small business. His parents were open to any future for their children, as long as it included getting an education. Olavarria earned a medical degree in Chile but still wanted to study logic and better understand the human brain. This led to a doctorate in neurobiology from the University of California, Berkeley.
At the UW he has an active research career, examining the development of organized neural circuits, or topographical maps, in the visual cortex. He has shown that, for these maps to develop normally, there must be retinal input during an early, brief, and well-defined critical period. His goal is to better understand the processes that regulate the timing and duration of this critical stage.
But it is Olavarria’s enthusiasm for teaching and readiness to work in new directions that helped him earn the teaching honor.
Steve Buck, professor and chair of the Psychology Department, points to Olavarria’s commitment to expanding opportunities for minority and disadvantaged students. This includes participation in the Minority Research Apprentice Program for high school students and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR-UP), in which Olavarria will teach for the fifth year this summer.
Olavarria also taught a one-month Discovery Seminar for incoming freshmen on “Biopsychology and the Brain.” And this summer he will lead an Exploration Seminar back to Chile, where he and students will study the country’s mental health care. “It’s an exploration for me, too,” he says.
Rebecca Aanerud
Assistant Professor, Women Studies
Rebecca Aanerud receives high praise as a teacher. Students and colleagues describe her as “insightful and effective,” a “role model” and a “superstar travel guide” into course content. But it’s almost ironic that she has made higher education her life’s work, considering that her first college experience ended so badly.
“Music was always a pretty clear love for me, from fifth grade on,” she says. “I knew I wanted to play French horn professionally; the New York Metropolitan Opera was my target. When I went to the Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, things were fine at first, but then they started to fall apart in a number of ways—ways that I didn’t understand at that time were related to issues of gender.”
Aanerud found that as a woman she was not taken seriously in music. Then she faced sexual harassment from a faculty member and became severely anorexic, after which she dropped out of school. Her husband, who had earned an undergraduate degree in music from the UW, suggested they move to Seattle. Once here, Aanerud began processing what had happened to her and looked into Women Studies. She finished a General Studies degree with an emphasis in Women Studies in 1990.
A book, This Bridge Called My Back, led her to her central focus. “It shifted a number of things for me, including challenging the way I understood my relationship to racism as a white person,” Aanerud says. “I had been taught that, while racism is a problem, it’s not my problem. That book was instrumental in moving me to a place where understanding what it means to be white is central to challenging racism in this country.”
Aanerud now does research in the area of whiteness studies, and brings this outlook to her classes. As a teacher, she says, she isn’t interested in having students find out what she thinks but rather in knowing what they think. “If they can figure out how to grapple with issues and come to an understanding, then I’m satisfied,” she says. “I’m really interested in their intellectual growth.”
That’s true whether she’s teaching graduate classes or the introductory Women Studies class. She does it all, says student Claire Fraczek, with a “deep sense of humanity, consistently checking and revising her own position in the world so that she may create a more just community for those around her.”
But in the end, it all comes down to students. “The students are just central,” Aanerud says. “I think they’re amazing —even the ones who seem cranky and difficult. I can’t think of a more challenging, more rewarding job.”
Ben Kerr
Assistant Professor, Biology
It almost sounds like a riddle from Alice in Wonderland: How is a microwave oven in a public area like a disease outbreak?
These are the kinds of provocative questions that keep Ben Kerr’s students on the edge of their seats in biology classes.
“In biology, you’re never more than a step away from sex and death. These are themes that generate immediate interest,” says Kerr. “The concepts cut across disciplines, with material that can be drawn from political science, economics, the arts, and popular culture. They deal with universal human conditions.”
Colleague Carl Bergstrom, associate professor of biology, says that Kerr’s lectures “are masterpieces that have to be seen to be believed.”
Kerr says the key to his success is listening to his students, and then being willing to improvise. He calls his approach “planned uncertainty,” creating a tangible level of excitement in his classroom.
“In science, truth is provisional,” says Kerr. “I want to get the spirit of science across, to help students recognize that science is more than a collection of facts. Like all of us, scientists come to the world with certain ideas about how things work. Ultimately, these ideas are thrown at the feet of the natural world. While you can control what experiments you run and how you take data, you don’t control what the world tells you. Based on this feedback, you may change your mind, alter your hypothesis.”
Kerr says teaching for him is very much like doing science. In science, the interaction between a scientist and the experimental environment changes both; in teaching the interaction of student and teacher also changes both. He notes that a deft touch is required for the classroom environment to create this kind of magic.
“The instructors I have admired the most orchestrated the class so subtly,” he says, “that they seemingly removed themselves and let the students conduct the journey on their own.”
This is an illusion born of hard work, as Kerr well knows. One of his teaching assistants, Jevin West, says he has worked with few professors that even come close to the preparation that Kerr puts into his classes, labs, and study sessions. In a letter nominating Kerr for the teaching award, he wrote, “Our department and our university are fortunate ...to have such an outstanding example of what teaching can and should be.”
TAs Recognized for Teaching Excellence
 |
|
| UW Excellence in Teaching Award recipients for 2008 include A&S graduate students (from left) Christopher Himes, Rachel Goldberg, and Fernanda Oyarzun. Photo by Nancy Joseph. |
|
Excellence in Teaching Awards are presented each year to teaching assistants (TAs) who demonstrate outstanding skills in the classroom. But this year, two graduate students were recognized for creating new curricula.
Chris Himes and Fernanda Oyarzun, TAs in the Department of Biology, noticed that too many students—particularly under- represented minorities and students from disadvantaged backgrounds—were unsuccessful in Biology 180, the undergraduate gateway course for the life sciences. So they created a series of workshops that eventually became a quarter-long course, focusing on skills for Biology 180 but also on basic college survival strategies, such as managing one’s time, taking useful notes, and developing good study habits. The result? Students who take the new course tend to perform better than expected in Biology 180.
Also receiving an Excellence in Teaching Award is Rachel Goldberg, a TA in the Department of English. Goldberg is interested in how language can be used to effect positive social change. “Learning how to write an academic paper is important, but learning how to communicate effectively in the public sphere is also important,” says Goldberg. “I try to teach my students how to be actively engaged in civic life through powerful writing.” Students praise Goldberg’s “passion for creating a space to learn and grow.”
Additional UW Recognition Awards for 2008
The College congratulates all recipients of UW recognition awards. For more information about the honorees listed below —all representing the College of Arts and Sciences—visit http://uwnews.org/uweek/Awards2008.
Distinguished Staff Award
Recognizes staff contributions to the mission of their unit or the University.
Philip Mote, research scientist, Climate Impacts Group (Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean) and affiliate professor of Atmospheric Sciences
James D. Clowes Award for the
Advancement of Learning Communities
Recognizes a faculty/staff member who creates or sustains learning communities among students.
Lance Bennett, Ruddick C. Lawrence
Professor of Communication and professor
of political science
David B. Thorud Leadership Award
Honors faculty/staff who lead, serve, inspire, and collaborate with broad-ranging impact that is beyond their regular responsibilities.
Kathleen Woodward, director of the
Simpson Center for the Humanities and professor of English
President’s Medal
Recognizes a graduating senior's exceptional academic achievement.
June Shujun Peng, Chemistry, Biochemistry
Alumni Association Distinguished
Service Award
The highest honor that the UW can bestow on a graduate, for a lifetime record of achievement.
Robb Weller, Communication, ‘72
Other Awards, Honors, and Professorships
Emily Bender, assistant professor of linguistics, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER grant.
Laada Bilaniuk, associate professor of anthropology, has been awarded Best Book in Slavic Linguistics from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, for her book Contested Tongues. She also received an award from the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program.
Herbert Blau, professor of English, received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from California Institute of the Arts. Blau was founding Provost of Cal Arts.
Lauro Flores, professor and chair of the Department of American Ethnic Studies, received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Chicano Literature at the 21st annual Tomás Rivera Conference.
Stephen Hinds, professor of classics, has been reappointed as Lockwood Professor of the Humanities.
Chris Hoffman, associate professor of mathematics, has been awarded a Centennial Fellowship by the American Mathematical Society.
Danny Hoffman, assistant professor of anthropology, has been named Weatherhead Residential Fellow for 2008-2009 at the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe. He also received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship.
Patricia K. Kuhl, professor of speech and hearing sciences and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, received the Gold Medal of The Acoustical Society of America, a branch of the American Institute of Physics. The Gold Medal is a lifetime achievement award.
Celia Lowe, associate professor of anthropology, received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.
Marvin Oliver, professor of American Indian studies, received first place in the exhibitors juried competition at the Heard Museum Guild 2008 Indian Fair and Market.
Devon Peña, professor of anthropology, has been named Centenary College Attaway Professor/Fellow in Civic Culture for 2008.
Brian Reed, associate professor of English, has been chosen as a Fulbright Scholar for 2008-09. He will spend six months teaching graduate courses at the University of Bochum, Germany, and helping develop a new Ph.D. program in American Studies jointly run by Bochum and the University of Dortmound.
Laurie J. Sears, professor of history, has been awarded a Senior Fellowship for 2008-2009 from the American Council of Learned Societies.
Robin Chapman Stacey, professor of history, won the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences, awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies, for her 2007 book, Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland.
Caroline Strömberg, Estella B. Leopold Assistant Professor in Biology and Burke Museum Curator of Paleontology, was honored by Elsevier, publisher of science and health information, recognizing a paper that was one of the “Top-50 most cited articles” published in PALAEO-3 during 2003-2007.
Nikolai Tolich, assistant professor of physics, won the 2008 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics from the American Physical Society, cited for “Experimental study of terrestrial electron anti-neutrinos with KamLAND.”
Ginger Warfield, senior lecturer in mathematics, received the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Education Prize for significant contributions to education in the mathematical sciences.
Fei Xia, assistant professor of linguistics, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER grant.
Return to Table of Contents, Summer 2008