CONTACT: Paula Gray, (608) 262-3639, pjgray@bascom.wisc.edu
MADISON – The very fact that they are students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison testifies to the hunger they have for learning.
“What chemicals make pepper sharp? How do Polish and German polkas differ – or do they? How can I learn to teach piano scales? Why do people revere the films of Andy Warhol? What research opportunities are there for chemistry students? What amendments to our Constitution were never ratified? Did everyone turn on in the 60s? What strategies might I use to convince my uncle to vote? This cow isn’t eating – what’s up with her? How can I encourage more health care professionals to work in rural Wisconsin?” they ask their teachers.
These teachers, faculty selected to receive UW-Madison’s 2006 Distinguished Teaching Awards, often don’t answer such questions directly. Instead, they encourage their students to grapple with their own inquiries and to draw their own conclusions after studying the available information. In short, by working with these teachers, students learn how to analyze, reflect and think.
Each award carries a $5,000 stipend. Winners will be recognized on Tuesday, April 18 at 3:30 p.m. at the Fluno Center at a ceremony and reception sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Association in cooperation with the UW-Madison Office of the Secretary of the Faculty. The event is free and open to all.
For more information about the teaching awards, contact Paul Gray at (608) 262-3969, pjgray@bascom.wisc.edu.
Winners are:
– HELEN E. BLACKWELL, assistant professor of chemistry: Chancellor’s Award.
Blackwell teaches a subject that strikes terror into the heart of many a student: organic chemistry.
“The topic is quite foreign to many undergraduates seeing it for the first time – the pace is fast, and the reading and problem sets are dense. It requires significant diligence to master . . . but that said, it’s a wonderful subject!” she says.
Blackwell’s classroom repertoire ranges from upper-level graduate seminars to introductory organic chemistry courses, often with some 375 students enrolled, since it is a required course for many other undergraduate science majors. There’s a solid reason behind that requirement, she says.
“Organic chemistry is the basis for the world around us – I make sure to pepper my lectures with real world examples, to show students that this subject is far from a dead science,” she says.
Blackwell has been known to pepper literally as well as metaphorically. In one lab course, her students synthesize piperine, the feisty component of black pepper. They also take a whiff of the finished product from a sample of black pepper that she brings to class.
Despite her fondness for culinary examples, Blackwell is credited for revising the “cookbook” format of laboratory sections, replacing it with an “inquiry based” program. She also has introduced the seemingly impossible writing component to some of her courses, fully integrating library and laboratory work. In the Intermediate Organic Synthesis Laboratory (Chem 346) that she is teaching this semester, she introduces the students to advanced synthesis techniques, scientific writing, ethics, the navigation of scientific literature and more.
Blackwell says that her goal is to encourage her students to think differently about the world around them.
“I want students to see how chemistry plays such a critical role in our lives,” she says. “I want students to say to each other, ‘Yeah, sign up for Professor Blackwell’s section this term – her lectures are so interesting, and she’ll actually make you think!”
Blackwell’s research into the mechanisms of bacterial communication won her a 2006 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. She joined the UW-Madison chemistry faculty in 2002. She earned her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and her B.A. from Oberlin College.
– JESSICA JOHNSON, assistant professor of piano and piano pedagogy: Emil H. Steiger Award
Says Johnson: “Music seeks to express the ineffable and mystical. It demands unguarded self-expression and complete vulnerability.
“As a result, teaching music requires the teacher to combine the intuitive and intellectual processes. The teacher has to be both an inspired artist and a meticulous scientist. The gifted teacher is one who can help the student draw from both sides of the musical brain and awaken his or her distinct musical voice.”
This is Johnson’s pedagogical philosophy and mission, which she has been practicing in UW-Madison’s School of Music since 2001. Her duties include carrying full and sole responsibility for both the school’s undergraduate teaching sequence and its graduate pedagogy-performance degree programs.
Johnson says that she always loved to teach.
“Even as a peer mentor in elementary school, I realized the impact that effective teaching had on a student’s potential to grow and learn,” she says. “Mutual respect is paramount in the teacher-student relationship. Additionally, a teacher must be an expert in his or her discipline in order to model the highest values and ideals for the student. I would bet that most Nobel winners would be quick to acknowledge a mentor-teacher who inspired and encouraged them along the way.”
Indeed, Johnson’s piano colleague Catherine Kautsky says that Johnson’s influence on her students has been profound, and in at least one case, life-changing:
“Recently, one of my own performance majors, who previously had volunteered to me that she didn’t like to teach, announced that she wanted to get a D.M.A. in pedagogy. Surprised, I asked what had caused her change of heart. She said, ‘Jess is such a great professor!’ When students contemplate changing their professional life because of even brief contact with one person, we should take note!” Kautsky says.
Johnson’s research focuses on pre-college piano pedagogy, although various aspects of her work bring her into contact with piano students from ages five to 81. Whoever those students happen to be, Johnson hopes they remember her as someone who instilled in them a profound love of music.
“I hope they describe me as passionate and committed, but I don’t mind if they refer to me as challenging and tough. Nothing of value comes without serious effort,” she says.
Johnson, awarded two Bolz Fellowships, earned her D.M.A. and M.M. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and her B.M. from East Carolina University.
– JAMES P. LEARY, professor of Scandinavian studies, Chancellor’s Award.
As director of UW-Madison’s Folklore Program and co-director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, it is Leary’s charge to get students to understand that folklore is on intimate terms with the here and now, bound tightly to their own lives and experiences.
To that end, he requires his students – this semester in his Introduction to American Folklore class – to conduct original field research and write several papers based on what they learn.
“Students are generally unaccustomed to doing ethnographic field research, which involves observation, conducting open-ended interviews on tape, photography and more, as well as writing in the first-person about their discoveries. We spend some time on field methods, ethical considerations and ways that they can present their work in formats that meet high academic standards but also accessible to the people that they interview,” Leary says.
Leary also has a considerable track record helping members of various cultural groups learn to reclaim and document their own heritages. For example, he has worked with the Ho-Chunk Nation to establish the Hocak Wazijaci (Woodland Ho-Chunk) Language and Culture Program, so that tribal members can record their heritage.
With a background that includes summer stints as a professional logger, farm hand, foundry worker in the Rice lake area and janitor, Leary helped pioneer student research and service learning at UW-Madison. His courses provide learners with opportunities to undertake such projects as art exhibitions, films, documentary sound recordings, Web sites and more.
In addition to his work at the university level, he has established important ties with K-12 students and teachers across the state. His collaborative Wisconsin Weather Stories project, conducted last year, brought university folklore and meteorology students together with teachers from Wisconsin public and tribal schools. They contributed to both intensive workshops for teachers on Wisconsin weather and its folklore, and a Web site for K-12 students. The latter won the 2005 Dorothy Howard Prize for Excellence from the American Folklore Society. He also is a well-known public figure across the region by virtue of his appearances on talk shows and public lecture series.
“I’d like to be remembered as someone who inspired students to take a closer look at the world around them, to value their own cultural experiences and to be more aware of and tolerant regarding the traditions and experiences of people they don’t know first-hand,” Leary says.
A member of the UW-Madison faculty since 1999, Leary holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University, an M.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a B.A. from Notre Dame University.
– J.J. MURPHY, professor of communication arts, Chancellor’s Award.
Murphy’s classic 1972 avant-garde film “Highway Landscape” opens on a shot of a rabbit carcass along the side of the road. The camera remains where it is some six minutes as traffic whizzes past the body.
What do you make of that? Can you make anything of it? Should you?
Those are the questions that film’s Structural Movement asks audiences.
Those are also some of the demands that Murphy, a filmmaker in the forefront of the Structural Movement, makes on his students.
In mainstream art or entertainment, meaning generally comes to its audience on a plate determined for them by the artist. Viewers easily become passive bystanders rather than active participants.
Murphy will have none of that, in either his art or his classroom. When he arrived on campus 25 years ago to develop a film and video production sequence – which communication arts department chair Vance Kepley describes as “a lean, tight, logical track for students aspiring to do creative work in film” – Murphy required those students to find their own way toward what works on film or video and what doesn’t.
Do-it-yourself learning is one of the pedagogical principles that Murphy embraces. He also exposes his students to intense collaborations.
“He uses film as a teaching tool in which students with different levels of experience work together and learn from each other,” observes Erik Gunneson, a former student and now the faculty associate who oversees the department’s technical side of film production.
Murphy himself, however, prefers his students not remember him in any one particular way. “All my students are so different,” he says. “I presume their responses to me will vary accordingly.”
This semester Murphy is teaching a new course on the films of Andy Warhol and a screenwriting course. Murphy’s M.A. is from the University of Iowa. His B.S. comes from the University of Scranton.
– GILBERT NATHANSON, professor of chemistry, Chancellor’s Award.
Nathanson thinks for a moment, then says: “Our efforts can best be summed up by the expression, ‘Making chem connections’ between our undergraduates and our faculty.”
The four annual events that Nathanson has helped create for the chemistry department describe precisely what he means by the aforementioned motto:
“Chem Connections introduces our teaching and support staff to our freshmen, and describes fellowship and research opportunities, the local chemistry fraternity and student-run chemistry groups. Our Introduction to Undergraduate Research presents brief overviews of the research that the 45 chemistry faculty members are doing. When our undergraduate students join research groups, they become part of a small family of a faculty member and graduate and undergraduate students. It’s a home-away-from-home within the university,” he says.
An important goal, Nathanson says, is for students to view scientific research as a very human and enjoyable experience – “An invaluable part of each of these sessions is the chance for students to engage in one-on-one conversations with faculty and with other students,” he says, adding that’s not all: “We also serve pizza.”
In his research laboratory, Nathanson investigates ways in which industrially important liquids and atmospheric aerosols capture gas molecules.
“In its most important application, the work examines reactions at the surface of supercooled sulfuric aerosols that destroy ozone in the atmosphere,” he says. Currently, he has two undergraduate chemistry students working with him in that area.
Named a Presidential Young Investigator in 1990-1994, Nathanson’s Ph.D. is from Harvard. His B.S. is from Yale. He became a member of the chemistry faculty at UW-Madison in 1988.
– HOWARD SCHWEBER, assistant professor of political science, William H. Kiekhofer Award.
One hundred years from now, Schweber would like to be remembered as a professor who brought intellectual excitement to his classes through his introduction of “strange, questionable questions,” he says. “When I am trying to sell one of my classes to a potential student, I often say that it’s going to be one heck of a ride.”
This semester those classes are a constitutional law class for upper level undergraduates; and Law in Political Theory: From Aristotle to Derrida, for graduate and law students.
Schweber admits that both are tough intellectual sledding, and that’s just the way he wants it.
“In my own education, my most memorable classes were not necessarily the easiest or even the most enjoyable at the time. They were the ones that raised questions and issues, and introduced ways of thinking that stuck with me long after the class was over,” Schweber says.
With a teaching style described by colleagues as “resolutely low tech,” Schweber’s classroom approach relies on a chalkboard and the traditional Socratic method of inquiry. He says that his aim is to draw students into the subject under discussion and force them to wrestle with the material on intimate terms.
Schweber says that excellence in teaching begins with a mastery of the subject, in his case, political theory and law.
“Political theory is very easy to teach; by and large, students like to think philosophically. If anything, it often strikes me that they seem starved for the opportunity to stretch those particular intellectual muscles,” he says.
His law courses, on the other hand, offer greater challenges:
“They combine readings of a kind with which students are not familiar and complex technical arguments. Those difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that most students come into a class on constitutional law thinking that they know how things work or should work, whether the issue is affirmative action or the Pledge of Allegiance or presidential war powers. There is a significant amount of unlearning that has to occur before real learning can take place,” he says.
The son of two college professors, Schweber saw early and first hand the impact that education can have.
“Teaching has been one of the prominent mechanisms for development and growth in my career,” he says. “Teaching is not about being disengaged from the world in an ivory tower, but should be the most engaged, actively involved work there can possibly be.”
On UW-Madison’s political science faculty, and an affiliate with the Law School since 1999, Schweber won a Mieklejohn-Powell Faculty Fellowship in 2002. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His M.A. is from the University of Chicago, and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a J.D. from the University of Washington.
– JEREMI SURI, associate professor of history, Class of 1955 Distinguished Teaching Award.
It can be tough to get cell phone toting, instant-messaging students to envision a time and place far removed from this one. Suri has a strategy for that:
“I try to immerse students in the words, images and even sounds of America – and the world – in the 1960s. I expose my students to diverse perspectives on and interpretations of the same issue. And I prod students to envision their own lives in different circumstances and settings,” he says.
This semester Suri is teaching the large lecture course, America in the World Since 1898, and a graduate seminar on the way imperialism has been practiced in the United States and Japan, which he co-teaches with history colleague Louise Young.
According to history department chair Steve Stern, the fact that students roust themselves relatively early in the morning for Suri’s classes demonstrates the sway he holds in the classroom.
And out of it, he carries an equally big educational stick. In his five years on the UW-Madison history faculty, Suri has helped organize a number of film series about the 1960s. He also has coordinated special programs and institutes for high school history teachers and students.
Specializing in detente and the cold war, Suri says that his research on the subject is part and parcel of his teaching. He adds that his students often provide his theories with an acid test.
“Students offer the fairest and clearest responses as to whether an idea makes sense or not,” he says. “They also push me to think more broadly and deeply about crucial issues – I don’t think I could do my research without the prodding, inspiration and encouragement of my students.”
Suri says that the ultimate goal of all his scholarly activities is to open his students’ eyes to the fact that there usually is no one right perspective, at least not in history.
“I want to encourage them to become better informed on all the viewpoints surrounding an issue, to think about those issues critically and to make their own analytical decisions,” he says. “I want them to disagree with me in a learned, rigorous and civil manner.”
On the UW-Madison Department of History faculty since 2001, Suri is the recipient of a Dorothy and Hsin-Nung Yao Teaching Award in 2004. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale. His M.A. is from Ohio University and his A.B. is from Stanford.
– KATHERINE CRAMER WALSH, assistant professor of political science, Chancellor’s Award.
Take back your government? It’ll require more than getting out your vote (although that’s a good start), according to Walsh.
“We face the dilemma of how to encourage our students to be engaged citizens while teaching them how little most people know about, care about and participate in politics,” she says. “I try to deal with this by providing accurate information about the levels of participation and engagement among most people, along with a critical analysis of why our civic competence is as bleak as it is.”
Happily, Walsh quickly adds that this is not as depressing a task as it may sound:
“Together, we consider the shape of institutions and policies that influence levels of engagement and what might be done to make citizens take ownership of their democracy. Whenever possible, I try to give students actual experience in the community to foster this reflection.”
Walsh herself is a model of active involvement, starting here on campus. For almost three years, she served on the Morgridge Center-UW Health Service Civic Engagement Committee, a group of volunteers seeking to encourage civic activism in the broader community by members of the campus community. She spent two years as a faculty associate of the Chadbourne Residential College. Last year, she was a member of the Faculty Senate, and is a faculty mentor to Chancellor’s Scholars, undergraduates from under-represented groups.
Walsh’s teaching does not stop with traditional students. As part of the UW-Madison Lafollette Institute for Public Affairs-Council of State Governments, she helps conduct an intensive weeklong seminar for emerging legislative leaders from 11 regional states and four Canadian provinces. The experience, she says, is not so different from teaching university students.
“I try to think of us all, no matter who we are or what we do, as co-learners,” Walsh says. “Teaching, learning and research are inter-related, and we should treat them as such. I try to create classrooms in which people feel safe contributing to the discussion, and look forward to hearing what others think.
“I would like my students to say, ‘She totally cares about her students. You’ll learn a lot in her class, and it just might change your life.'”
This semester Walsh is teaching an undergraduate course on public opinion; the second semester of a yearlong class for students writing a senior honors thesis; and Citizenship, Democracy and Difference, a service-learning course for upper-level undergraduates. Walsh earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and her B.A. with honors from UW-Madison. She has been on the UW-Madison political science faculty since 2000.
– MICHEL A. WATTIAUX, assistant professor of dairy science, Chancellor’s Award.
There’s no experience like direct experience, especially, perhaps, when it comes to livestock.
Wattiaux is an ardent believer in the hands-on method of learning, and consequently has developed a number of courses designed to let students get right in there with cows.
His Dairy Cattle Husbandry course, for example, assigns each student a cow. The students become responsible for monitoring their charge’s overall health and nutritional status as they implement the husbandry techniques that they learn in class.
The moment that Wattiaux came to his teaching philosophy was when he realized that effective learning had less to do with him and his teaching techniques, and more to do with the students themselves, he says.
“A few years ago I decided to stop lecturing with PowerPoint presentations. I saw that while my teaching is the means, my students’ learning is the ultimate goal,” he says.
Teaching dairy science carries its own special difficulties, Wattiaux says, because “students often want to know the ‘how?’ but rarely question the ‘why?'” he says. “It’s important for students to realize that their university education is not only about ‘knowing’ dairy science but, as importantly about learning how to learn, how to analyze, reflect, evaluate and communicate. It is only with learning skills that students can use throughout their lives that they will reach their potential as innovators in tomorrow’s world.”
Fielding that world of tomorrow is going to present students of today with a set of substantial challenges, Wattiaux says.
“As often as I can I place students in situations in which they have to collect their own data and make their own decisions,” he says. “This type of learning helps them think critically, act responsibly and develop a professional ethic.”
Wattiaux arrived on campus as a doctoral candidate from his native Belgium. He earned his Ph.D. here. His M.S. is from the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He joined the UW-Madison dairy science faculty in 2000, after co-directing the Babcock Institute for International Dairy Research and Development for three years. The American Dairy Science Association bestowed its International Dairy Production Award on him in 2002, and in 1999 the Babcock Institute, under his direction, won the Governor’s Award for Achievement in Export.
– SUSAN J. ZAHNER, assistant professor of nursing, Van Hise Outreach Award.
Wisconsin, like much of the country, faces a serious and deepening shortage of health care providers, particularly in rural areas.
“It’s a real challenge for me to promote understanding of and appreciation for public health perspectives in students who have grown up watching ‘ER’ on television and expect to work in high tech/critical care positions,” Zahner says. “However, as students are exposed to the concepts and practices – and to skilled nurses working in those settings – most come away with a strong appreciation for the importance of public health nursing, whatever the setting.”
All of Wisconsin, like much of the country, is looking to people like Zahner for help in preparing nurses to work across a range of community health settings. One of her innovations, for example, is an online continuing education course that shows practicing community health nurses how to work more effectively with student nurses.
Another project has been the Western Campus for Nursing in partnership with Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, where roughly 40 students have received training since the program’s inception in 2002.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Zahner also excels at evaluating and improving the programs she develops. She also excels at teaching her students to do the same.
“My course, Program Planning, Evaluation and Quality Improvement, helps learners to develop the skills they need to plan and evaluate programs, as well as become acquainted with concepts of quality improvement in health care and public health,” she says.
Her research program in that area has included gathering information from nurses on how to improve education for community health nursing practice. Last year, Zahner received the Mary Adelaide Nutting Award for Academic/Practice Linkages from the Western Wisconsin Public Health Education Consortium. She has been on the UW-Madison nursing faculty for the last five years, and earned a doctor of public health from the University of California-Berkeley, a master’s from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s from the University of Iowa.
