 | Pictured at the dinner honoring this year's Prize Teaching Fellows are (seated, from left) Jeffrey Headrick, Dorota Heneghan, Justin Zaremby and Todd Olszewski; and (standing, from left) Yale College Dean Peter Salovey, Sean Taylor, Heidi Howkins Lockwood, Seth Dworkin, Barry Muchnick, Daniel Feldman, Charles More and Graduate School Dean Jon Butler. |
Twelve doctoral students were recently honored for their outstanding ability to instruct and inspire Yale undergraduates in discussion sections, language classes and science labs.
This year's winners of the $2,000 Prize Teaching Fellowships (PTFs) are Carolyne Davidson (history), Seth Dworkin (mechanical engineering), Daniel Feldman (comparative literature), Jeffrey Headrick (chemistry), Dorota Heneghan (Spanish and Portuguese), Joshua Levithan (history), Heidi Howkins Lockwood (philosophy), Charles More (philosophy), Barry Muchnick (history), Todd Olszewski (history of medicine and science), Sean Taylor (molecular, cellular and developmental biology) and Justin Zaremby (political science).
All are in the process of conducting original dissertation research. Some also currently serve as teaching fellows, teaching assistants (TAs) or part-time acting instructors (PTAIs).
Yale College Dean Peter Salovey and Graduate School Dean Jon Butler hosted a dinner on Nov. 1 to honor this year's PTF winners.
"Graduate students can have an enormous influence on college students' development when they serve as their teaching fellows," said Salovey. "Students will remember their inspiring teaching, specific feedback and personal advice years later. In the Graduate School, where there is a culture that places great emphasis on scholarship and research, these students also understand the importance of their role as educators."
Each semester, the Yale College Dean's Office invites undergraduates and faculty members who supervise teaching fellows to nominate candidates for the awards. Winners are chosen in late spring by a committee of directors of undergraduate and graduate studies in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, as well as the director of the Teaching Fellow Program and an associate dean of Yale College.
"Those awarded Prize Teaching Fellowships," noted Butler, "have demonstrated one of the signal attributes of superb teaching -- their caring for students. Students rightly sense a teacher's caring, and the nominations all commented on the recipients' sense of commitment and engagement in the classroom and beyond."
Of the importance of teaching and its link to research, Butler said: "Teaching is explanation and the crown of scholarship and research. Without research there is nothing to explain, and without explanation, research has no shape, form or meaning."
Davidson, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, received her undergraduate degree from Cambridge University. Letters nominating her for the PTF praised her energy and infectious enthusiasm in leading sections of John Gaddis' "Cold War" and Beverly Gage's "Terrorism in America, 1865-2001." Both supervising professors and students said they also were impressed by her mastery of the subject and her openness and availability to students.
The nominations for Dworkin's prize praised his ability to explain difficult concepts in an elegant manner, as well as his knowledge, accessibility and kindness. He has taught several engineering courses, including "Dynamics," "Fluid Mechanics" and "Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations."
Feldman was described as "a gifted teacher and scholar of extraordinary generosity ... intelligence and integrity," who combined insight with humor when he was a teaching fellow for "Theory of Literature," "Truth Commissions: Accounting for Past Human Rights Abuses," "Holocaust in Historical Context" and "Odysseys and Constructions of Nostalgia" -- interdisciplinary courses that drew on his knowledge of history, literature, political science, religious studies and classical civilizations. He is founder of the Artemis Project, an initiative that collects, preserves and disseminates materials from truth commissions around the world.
Headrick won his first PTF in 2004. In nominating him for a second PTF for his teaching of chemistry, students cited his "incredible" grasp of the material, his genuine concern for them, his general eagerness to help and his ability to explain difficult concepts clearly.
After earning a master's degree in German from the University of Silesia, Polish-born Heneghan came to Yale to study Spanish literature. She first earned a PTF in 2004, and once again last year was recommended for the prize. Students and faculty describe her as an "incredible" language teacher, who is full of creativity, energy and commitment, and who displays wit, kindness and fairness in the classroom.
Levithan majored in history as a Yale undergraduate, earned a master's degree from the Divinity School and then joined the Graduate School to pursue his Ph.D. His research interest is Roman history, particularly military and social history. Over the past few years, Levithan has taught a variety of history courses, including one on the history of Japan, where he earned accolades from his supervising professors for mastering a topic that is unrelated to his primary scholarly pursuits. Student nominations mention his knowledge and intelligence as well as his approachability, sense of humor and ability to encourage participation.
A student of metaphysics, logic and epistemology, Lockwood is also a professional high-altitude mountain climber and has led expeditions to Himalayan peaks -- including K2 and Everest -- that were featured on "National Geographic TV" and in a book published in 2001. As a teaching fellow, she has been praised for her clarity, high level of motivation, patience and wide knowledge. She has taught a course titled "Death" and another called "Mathematical Logic," for which she created a "letter-box" scavenger hunt that combined philosophical puzzles with searches for clues around campus.
A classics major in college, More's primary research now focuses on ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Like Lockwood, he has faced "Death" in the classroom, as well as "Early Modern Philosophy." His students in "First Order Logic" lauded his informative presentations, clarity, fairness, generosity of spirit and upbeat attitude. Faculty members have called him a skilled, selfless and devoted teacher with a passion for his subject.
"Brilliant, approachable, thought-provoking and challenging all at once" is how one student described Muchnick, who was PTAI for "Wilderness in the North American Imagination." Muchnick majored in philosophy and psychology at Emory University, founded a chapter of Wilderness Watch and ran an art studio. He then spent two years studying wilderness management and working on projects for the U.S. Geological Survey on grizzly bears and desert tortoises before coming to Yale, initially earning a master's degree from the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Head teaching assistant for "Fat and Thin: A History of American Bodies," Olszewski has been described as an innovative, conscientious, compassionate teacher with wide-ranging knowledge and a zest for life. He has also taught "Biology and Society in the 20th Century" and "History of Modern Sciences in Society." His own research on "The Cholesterol Controversy: Atherosclerosis, Diet and Health in 20th-Century America, 1937-1961" will provide the first overall history of cholesterol as a scientifically and socially significant molecule.
While deeply engaged in his own research on RNA -- work that has potential in the development of antiviral therapeutics -- Taylor has earned praise as a teaching assistant for "Biochemistry," a course that introduces both undergraduates and graduate students to the biochemistry of animals, plants and microorganisms. Letters of nomination called Taylor a brilliant scientist with an "astounding" breadth of knowledge, and commend him for dedication, enthusiasm, friendliness and the ability to explain extremely complex ideas.
Zaremby has been a teaching fellow for "The American Presidency" and "The Moral Foundations of Politics." One student wrote in nomination, "Justin stands out as the exemplification of everything a TA should be," and another said, "His insight and advice have carried over into my other classes and other realms of my life." A Yale college alumnus, Zaremby majored in humanities, producing a senior thesis on the Directed Studies Program that will be printed this semester by the Whitney Humanities Center. He is currently at work on a dissertation exploring the intellectual as political adviser, from Plato to Condoleeza Rice.
The Prize Teaching Fellowship program grew out of an experiment proposed in 1980 to honor excellence in undergraduate teaching in the laboratory and classroom.
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Doctoral students are honored for their 'inspiring teaching'
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Book awards benefit area high school students and their school libraries
Campus Notes
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