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February 1, 2008|Volume 36, Number 16


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Teaching fellowship winners
are urged to ‘create passion’

The role of teaching in the life of doctoral students was underscored at a recent dinner held on campus to honor this year’s winners of the Prize Teaching Fellowships (PTF).

All doctoral students at Yale are expected to teach en route to earning their degree. Science students often assist in undergraduate lab courses; humanities and social science students usually lead discussion sections; and students from any discipline may become graders for a large lecture class. Each year, doctoral students are nominated by the undergraduates that they teach and by the faculty whom they assist for PTFs. The fellowship winners are, in turn, invited to teach their own course as part-time acting instructors, giving them practical training for their careers in academia.

“You will always be teaching, no matter what your official career turns out to be,” Graduate School Dean Jon Butler told the PTF winners at the dinner. “People remember their inspiring teachers. Think of the teacher who motivated you to go to graduate school: That was someone who opened the world to you. Opening the world to other people is what teaching is about. It’s a privilege to do this.”

Yale College Dean Peter Salovey noted that teaching was not just a simple transfer of information. The idea that “as a smart person, I’ll take what’s in my head and stuff it into the students’ heads” doesn’t work, said Salovey. Instead, he urged the PTFs to “transcend content” and “create passion. Inspire students to learn what they love, to find what they want to study lifelong. Nothing could be more important than helping students find their passion.”

This year’s PTFs are Justin K. Belardi (chemistry), Omri Boehm (philosophy), Christine DeLorenzo (engineering and applied science), Daniel B. Feldman (comparative literature), David N. Huyssen (history), Aaron F. Mertz (physics), Seth T. Monahan (music), Ethan T. Neil (physics), Manish M. Patnaik (mathematics), Robert T. Person (political science), Ayesha Ramachandran (English and Renaissance studies), Rachael A. Relph (chemistry), Eric D. Stern (engineering and applied science), Sean D. Taylor (molecular, cellular and developmental biology), Helen Zoe Veit (history), Mary Beth Willard (philosophy) and Helen Wong (mathematics).

This was Feldman’s second PTF. He has been a teaching assistant for “The Holocaust in Historical Context” and “The Bible as Literature” and taught a course of his own design, “Art, Atrocity, Truth,” which explored literary and aesthetic representations of genocide. His students describe him as learned, insightful, quick, funny, approachable and generally “phenomenal.”

Feldman notes he made a concerted effort to learn to be a good teacher. In addition to participating in pedagogy training offered by the Graduate School, he says, “I tried to emulate effective teaching techniques I learned from some of Yale’s eminent humanities scholars. In the semesters I first began teaching, I took myself on a ‘teaching tour’ in which I visited professors who are known to be some of the top teachers on campus. I compiled a notebook of their various techniques and adopted some of them for my own classroom style.”

Other PTF winners say they receive a great deal of satisfaction in their role as teachers. Veit said, “As a history teacher, I love guiding the process of discovery, as students become interested in topics that at first seemed dry or banal.”

Philosophy student Willard noted, “The best part about teaching is the point when students are inspired not just to learn the various philosophical arguments and views presented, but to do philosophy themselves, challenging themselves and their classmates with their own arguments.”

Of his music classes, Monahan says, “Nothing is more rewarding than when a class gels as an ensemble — when we find that collective, internal rhythm of give and take, question and answer. … [I]t is, in effect, a kind of structured improvisation.”

Person in political science says, “I always remind myself that teaching is a performance. There’s certain information that you have to convey to the students, but frankly, if the ‘audience’ isn’t entertained and engaged, they’re less likely to learn the material we’re presenting to them in the first place.”

He adds, “I think it’s important to set the bar high. Yale students are very hard working and they want to do well. It’s always been my experience that if you set high but fair expectations, Yale undergrads will rise to the occasion, and in doing so, will really push their own boundaries.”


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New endowed chair honors Marie Borroff

Initiative to boost humanities-professional school interaction

Faculty survey to be starting point for ‘self-evaluation’

In Focus: Peking-Yale Joint Undergraduate Program

Forming bonds in China: Students hail their immersion experience


ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS

Yale Press to create digital edition of Soviet leader Stalin’s . . .

Switzerland tops experts’ index of global environmental leaders

Levin urges rededication to Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘dream’

Paula Vogel to head School of Drama’s playwriting department

Study shows elderly with low vitamin E levels are . . .

Researchers identify key factor in stress effects on the brain

Exhibits explore British artists’ images of the Middle East

Drama School stages Ibsen’s ‘Peer Gynt,’ an exploration of . . .

Poetry and visual arts are united in library exhibitions’ . . .

Teaching fellowship winners are urged to ‘create passion’

IN MEMORIAM

Yale Books in Brief

Campus Notes


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