The instructors were nominated by undergraduates to receive the honors, which included five Yale College Prizes for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and the Sarai Ribicoff '79 Award for the Encouragement of Teaching at Yale College. The awards were presented by Richard H. Brodhead, dean of Yale College. The faculty members who were honored are:
Laura King, assistant professor of English -- The Sarai Ribicoff '79 Award, presented to a junior faculty member in the humanities whose instruction and character reflect the independence and originality of the late Sarai Ribicoff, a 1979 graduate of Yale College.
Kai T. Erikson, professor of sociology and of American studies -- the Harwood F. Byrnes - Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize, established three years ago by a member of the Class of 1942 to honor a teacher in Yale College "who has given the most time, energy and effective effort to helping undergraduates learn."
John D. Rogers, assistant professor of English -- The Yale College - Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities.
William Segraves, assistant professor of biology -- The Yale College - Dylan Hixon '88 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences.
Yitzak Brudny, assistant professor of political science -- The Yale College - Lex Hixon '63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences.
Howard Stern, senior lector in Germanic languages and literature and lecturer in the Directed Studies Program -- The Yale College Prize for Teaching Excellence by a Lector or Lecturer.
The award citations follow:
Laura King
The Sarai Ribicoff '79 Award for
the Encouragement of Teaching
at Yale College
Laura King, you have shown yourself undaunted by a challenge that would leave other lecturers, as Chaucer put it, "in a kankerdort": namely, that your subject -- medieval drama -- is not one that generally attracts a large undergraduate following. But the teaching evaluations by the almost 60 students who enrolled in your course last year make them all sound like converts to the pleasures of reading these arcane and sometimes fragmentary texts. Most are in retrospect incredulous that they had ever once hesitated to sign up for a course in early English literature. When asked if they would recommend this course to a friend, about half the students replied, "I already have." Your presentations are unanimously praised for drawing apparently casual but deeply significant connections between medieval archetypes and contemporary instances. But your former students do dispute with one another over one matter -- whether you should be described as "the best lecturer in English" or simply "the best lecturer at Yale."
You have been equally successful and beloved as a seminar leader, especially in those English courses that students take in their first years at Yale. Students in your sections of English 120 and 125 testify that working with you has not only improved their writing skills, but transformed the act of writing from a task to a vocation.
Students know that they can always call upon you for help and direction, and they eagerly seek you out after class; in your office as a Director of Undergraduate Studies and adviser; and even as you rove across campus in the company of what one colleague describes as your "famous and extremely large dog," Smitty.
For the brilliance of your teaching and for the devotion you have shown to your students, Yale College is proud to bestow the Sarai Ribicoff Award this year on Laura King.
Kai T. Erikson
The Harwood F. Byrnes -
Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize
Kai Erikson, your life and career have been marked by a dedication to questions of community. Although many of today's alleged champions of "community values" envision an unreal and frankly uninteresting world without controversy or calamity, your award-winning books have suggested that the true character of a community is revealed by how it accommodates deviance and recovers from disaster. Whether writing about wayward Puritans in Massachusetts or catastrophic flooding in West Virginia, you have instructed us about the ways in which others responded to internal tensions and external threats.
These are lessons you have brought home to Yale students throughout your thirty years on the faculty here, whether as a dynamic undergraduate teacher, a caring and gracious master, or a wise personal adviser. You have served this university ably in many important official capacities -- as chairman of two departments, chairman of the Council of Masters, and editor of the Yale Review -- but today we honor, above all, your warmth and your unfailing capacity to make your students feel that each of them matters to you and to Yale.
For the concern and respect you have long shown to others, and for the shining example of your own character, Yale College is very proud to recognize Kai Erikson today as an outstanding teacher in the highest traditions of education in Yale College.
John D. Rogers
The Yale College-Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for Teaching
Excellence in the Humanities
John Rogers, a famous critic once said of the epic poem "Paradise Lost," a major focus of your lecture course on Milton, that "none [had] ever wished it longer." No one, that is, until now. For you have a knack of making this vast, complex masterpiece approachable even to first-time readers and an aptitude for reminding those who think they are already familiar with the poem that it still contains surprises. You make your students want to linger and know more of Milton.
But lingering is not exactly your style. In smaller classes, such as English 125, your students confess they wind up feeling exhilarated almost to the point of giddiness by your quick wit and seemingly unlimited capacity to take on new and further questions. One student remarked that you could hold a class's interest even if the subject of discussion were the nutritional information on the side panel of a cornflakes box. Normally, however, your syllabus tends to include the major works of 17th-century English poetry.
Outside of class, you have proven to be a sensitive adviser, generous with your time and conscientious in your counsel. For your skillful teaching, your lively intellectual curiosity, and your amiability at all times, we are very proud to recognize John Rogers, an alumnus in the Yale College Class of 1984, as a most dedicated instructor in the highest traditions of education in Yale College.
William Segraves
The Yale College - Dylan Hixon '88 Prize for Teaching Excellence
in the Natural Sciences
William Segraves, you are renowned among Yale undergraduates for your ability to inspire interest in the biological sciences. Even as you challenge your students to find their way through current and disputed issues in the biology of human reproduction, you also encourage them to make connections between scientific projects and social, political, and ethical questions. Your own example leads the way. Your lectures not only explicate the latest material about such topics as in vitro fertilization or sexually- transmitted diseases, but regularly reflect on the potential implications for people's lives -- indeed your students' lives and your own life -- of research being pursued by today's experts and perhaps someday soon by some of the students in your class. You are praised for the clarity of your presentations about those matters that scientists can make clear and for your circumspection in discussing those that cannot.
Most of all, students marvel at your eagerness to engage them and their interests at any time and for any length of time. You can be found on a bench outside your lecture hall in OML after every class, answering questions and asking for more. You hold open and unlimited office hours, and reach out especially to students who need extra help.
We are therefore very proud to recognize the excellence and broad range of William Segraves's contributions to undergraduate teaching in the natural sciences, all in the highest traditions of education in Yale College.
Yitzhak Brudny
The Yale College - Lex Hixon '63 Prize for Teaching Excellence
in the Social Sciences
Yitzhak Brudny, your lectures on the demise of the Soviet empire and contemporary Russian politics achieve one of the principal goals of the teaching mission at this university: Your research projects and your classroom materials, rather than pulling against each other in an awkward tension, come together into a felicitous whole. Observations you have made on one of your regular research trips to Russia enter as readily and as logically into your next class as into your latest writings. Your students feel as though they are being treated to the latest breakthroughs in Western knowledge of Russian affairs, as indeed they are.
Students in your seminars appreciate the encouragement you give to their questioning of conventional arguments and your equally characteristic encouragement of their own attempts at original explanations. They especially value your deftness in handling the most far-ranging questions with an astounding wealth of information, fresh insight, and intellectual integrity.
For instilling in your students a sense that they are indeed full colleagues in the enterprise of scholarship, we are very proud to recognize Yitzhak Brudny as an instructor in the highest traditions of education in Yale College.
Howard Stern
The Yale College Prize for Teaching Excellence by a Lector or Lecturer
Howard Stern, you have established a remarkable record of undergraduate teaching at Yale. Esteemed by your colleagues as a poet of genuine distinction and an accomplished translator of verse, you are best known to Yale students as the Meister of German 125 -- a course you have made famous for being both a lot of work and a lot of fun. By inspiring students to meet your own high standards, and sometimes by tweaking them if they do not, you have introduced several generations of Yale students into the many delights of fluency in German.
You are equally celebrated for your work in the Directed Studies Program. Your students draw upon your wide linguistic range including Latin, French, Russian, and Yiddish, in addition to German and your rigorous training as a comparativist as a resource to animate and guide their discussions. They compare your pedagogical style to that of Socrates, whom you read together, for the elegant difficulty of the questions you propose and for the patient tact with which you help them shape their answers.
For bringing exceptional human and intellectual gifts to bear afresh upon your teaching year after year, we are very proud to commend Howard Stern as an instructor who represents the highest traditions of education in Yale College.