RELATED LINKS
2007 Teaching Award Winners
David Wallace: Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching
David is the Judith Rodin Professor of English. He has been a member of the Penn faculty since 1996 and is the former chair of the English department. David is widely acknowledged as one of the leading scholars of Chaucer (if not the leading scholar) in the world. At first glance, a course with David might seem rather intimidating. There are the students who find his reading lists too long and his grading too stringent. And then there is the subject matter, medieval literature, which many a seasoned English major finds incredibly difficult. But it’s those same students who pepper their teaching evaluations of David with over-the-top comments like, “A Chaucer guru,” “Wallace is the man,” “David Wallace is God,” and “As cool as Austin Powers!” Many students declare David’s courses “must-takes,” and his department has had to raise the enrollment ceilings in his Chaucer classes twice, something unheard of in most English programs.
Part of David’s appeal is simply his ability to make his students love medieval literature as much as he does. A colleague writes, “Unlike some of us, he is not content to preach to the converted; rather he is determined to convince each and every one of his students that medieval literature is exciting.” A student was a bit more forthright, saying “Dr. Wallace brought smelly, illiterate, poor medieval folks to life, and made them exciting and loveable. He’s great.” Other students praise the environment that David creates in classroom discussions. An undergraduate writes, “Although an established professor with an overwhelming reputation in the academic world, he is ever open and invested in enlightening ideas from undergraduate students.” A graduate student agrees, observing that David “consistently manages to engage the participants in his classroom on an egalitarian level, dispensing his considerable knowledge with wit and humor.” Yet another student put it this way: “He has the best elegance to arrogance ratio of any Professor I know.”
David rises fully to the challenge of teaching works in Middle English. A faculty member notes that “David wins them at the threshold via the ear: by reading Middle English aloud in his sonorous and dulcet English accent.” Students then read the works aloud themselves, something that they find to be a very helpful learning tool. A graduate student notes that while it is the convention to read The Canterbury Tales in their printed sequence, David teaches them out of order, “starting with simpler, shorter narrative texts and building to more complex ones,” an
approach that is very effective for first-time students of Middle English. If David wants his students to experience what he refers to as the “time travel” that medieval literature affords, he also wants them to understand the present-day relevance of the texts that they read. A student recalled classroom discussion of “gothic returns … as they appeared in music, television adaptations, and even place names. Such readings of contemporary cultural artifacts challenged students to rethink their assumptions about Chaucer and the Middle Ages more generally.”
The words “collegiality” and “generosity” appear often in letters about David. Undergraduate and graduate students alike talk about how giving he is with his time, advice, and encouragement outside of class. An undergraduate told us, for example, how when she was working in England on her senior thesis, David set up meetings for her with scholars in Oxford and London and even stopped by the British Library to check in on how she was doing.
David has been instrumental in building the graduate program in medieval literature into one of the very best anywhere. One need only look at the job placements of David’s students to see how well he trains them; they have gone on to positions at places like Illinois, Washington University, Georgetown, MIT, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr. Graduate students in every subfield in the department are eager to take a class with him, but his own students “receive the best mentoring academe has to offer,” as one colleague put it. One of his students concurs, writing “I know I am not alone in seeing him as a role model of the highest caliber in all areas of professorship.”
A student in one of David’s classes concluded the following in his course evaluation: “This class is really about hero-worship – because by the end of the term, you will worship David Wallace as your hero!”
Peter Decherney: Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching
Peter has taught in English at Penn since 2004. He has played an important role in developing the curriculum for our new Cinema Studies program, but in fact his courses on film history, which are cross-listed, have benefited the English curriculum as well. An English colleague notes how such courses “[compel] students toward broader rather than narrower education, and marking points of contact between the traditional curriculum and the latest emergent subfield.” One of Peter’s most inventive courses is called “Copyright and Culture.” Students arrive in the course knowing nothing about copyright or its implications. As one of them put it, “the popular conception of copyright is that … it is the realm of sad, little old men in dusty underground libraries.” But as another student explains, “I came to understand very quickly through Dr. Decherney’s teaching how these issues affect not only the written word, but many other areas of life as well. … I never realized how much cross hatching there was between disciplines before taking [the class].”
Peter is also well-known for his use of technology in the classroom. His students are treated to video- and audio clips, digital stills, podcasts, and even videoconferencing to bring in guest lecturers. But such tools are no mere bells and whistles for Peter. A student also points out that Peter explores technology “as a field of inquiry itself … [He] consistently asks his students to consider the impact of new technologies on business, culture, and aesthetics.” Peter is also committed to making classroom technologies available to others. Sometimes this is on a small scale: for example, he is building a digital library of video clips. It can be on a university scale: PennTags, a bookmarking site that creates a user-generated catalog of academic resources, was developed by the Penn Library for one of his classes but is now available to everyone on campus. And it can even be on a national scale: Peter played an important role in the effort to revise the Millenium Copyright Act to allow for the use of DVD materials as part of classroom instruction, something that will enhance teaching across the country.
A colleague concludes that Peter “is a veritable engine of new approaches and ideas. … Indeed, the whole list of what he has accomplished in his short time here is simply staggering. When, I wonder, does he sleep?”
Frederick Scatena: Dean's Award for Mentorship of Undergraduate Research
Fred arrived at Penn in 2002 and currently serves as the chair of Earth and Environmental Science. He is adored by the students who work under him on research projects, and for whom he gives guidance not only on research topics but on funding sources, contacts, and projects. He encourages his mentees to attend conferences and to present and publish their findings. Fred also provides invaluable moral support. Writes one student, “Fred kept me on track! … There was even a time when I got pretty fed up and thought I might quit, but he wouldn’t let me! … He helped me realize that … that when you get results you don’t expect that is merely just another reason to keep going.”
Where Fred perhaps shines most brightly as a mentor is out in the field. He mentors interns in the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates Program in Tropical Ecology and Evolution, held each summer in Puerto Rico. A student recalls how Fred “ventured into the field to show students the proper methods, … gave them a ride in his personal vehicle if they needed transportation, and … met with them regularly to see that they [were] on the right track.”One of Fred’s graduate students tells us how, as a Penn undergraduate, an encounter with Fred on a field trip to Puerto Rico altered his career path. He writes, “Clad in his trademark jungle outfit – pink polo shirt, tattered jeans, mismatched socks, and a stylish panama hat – Fred navigated our class on a bushwhack tour through the forest. Machete in hand, he showcased the wonders of the rainforest with a contagious zeal that had me instantly hooked.” Later, back in Puerto Rico, Fred “voluntarily helped set up a network of rain gages to collect data for my undergraduate thesis. This … was seemingly no inconvenience for him, but rather a gratifying pleasure. The conditions were grueling: we grew weary from miles of hiking, we were dehydrated from the relentless summertime heat, we were cut and torn from the dense lacerating thorn shrub. Yet when we finished and took a break on the ridgetop, Fred turned to me and said earnestly, ‘Isn’t this great?’”
One of Fred’s students tells us, “Dr. Scatena is a busy man. … Yet his door is always open. At times, I have felt slightly guilty taking advantage of his open door, as if I am diverting him from more important duties. Yet I noticed that for him, working with his students is the important duty.”
Karen Detlefsen: Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor
Karen joined the Philosophy department in 2001. Her teaching has ranged from smaller undergraduate and graduate seminars to the large “Introduction to Modern Philosophy.” Several of Karen’s students proclaim her the best professor they have had at Penn. Writes one, “She not only taught us about philosophy, but also made us understand the impact and relevance of the issues and encouraged us to actively consider our world and our existence.”
What are the secrets of Karen’s success? First, there are her lectures. One undergraduate explained, “She will turn what took me five hours to read into ten minutes of dense argument that I really understand. When she mentions objections, they are well formed and potent objections. When she goes on tangents, they are great tangents. She keeps material in lecture fresh, on point, and exciting. I plan on taking as many courses as possible with her in the future.” Responding to questions from students is one of the most fundamental duties of any teacher, but we received an unusual number of comments about this aspect of Karen’s classes. Even graduate students remark how much they learn about teaching from observing Professor Detlefsen’s techniques in this regard. An undergraduate writes, “She did not merely answer questions that we had but always took the further step in showing other issues that our questions raised.” Another notes that Karen would often do research on student questions and return to them the following week. Yet another student says, “In my fifteen years of education, I have never seen a teacher answer questions better than Professor Detlefsen. … [She] is able to mine bad questions for their philosophical gold, and turn what could have been a boring and redundant experience into an educational one. She makes my questions sound like a scholar’s thesis topic.”
Sally Mallory: Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Affiliated Faculty
Sally is a Senior Lecturer who has taught in the Chemistry department since 1980. In 1989 she received the Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, which is the University’s highest teaching honor for non-standing faculty. Sally teaches the introductory course in experimental organic chemistry, a class that is notoriously difficult. But countless students come away from Sally’s course making comments like the following: “Dr. Mallory made one of the scariest courses at Penn the most enjoyable of my four years.” A faculty member notes, “She constantly generates great student enthusiasm … and yet she does it by getting her students to work really hard!”
Students describe Sally’s lectures as “exceptionally coherent” and say that they “forced us to understand the why of every procedural step.” One student writes, “Her teaching style tends to draw students into active participation. A lot of undergraduate labs tend to be cooking classes with all the work consisting of following recipes. Dr. Mallory’s labs, however, require active thought and as a result, force the student to integrate difficult concepts into their understanding of the material.” Another student told us how Sally “prepared students for future work in a research laboratory. [She imposed] strict deadlines and [required] students to be fully aware of what they had to do and why they were doing it.”
Other students praise the excellent organization and coordination of Sally’s lectures and labs. And while she has taught organic chemistry for many years, Sally is not one to rest on her pedagogical laurels; a colleague notes how she “makes changes every semester in an ongoing effort to improve the course.” Sally’s students constantly use the words “amiable” and “caring” when talking about her. She devotes long hours – sometimes entire afternoons – to helping students with their work outside of class. Several students in her courses, which enroll upwards of 200 people, reported how stunned they were – and also how touched they were – when Sally would approach them in the lab, having never met them before, and address them by name.
A student concludes that “Not only does she obviously love chemistry, but she also clearly loves teaching…Dr. Mallory is an amazing professor.”
A graduate student described another of Karen’s helpful pedagogical tools: “She draws charts that map out graphically the different positions of different philosophers on various issues. … In a three-hour seminar, she will often spend the first half constructing a chart, only to erase it over the break and start all over again, in order to present a historiographical narrative that is orthogonal to, or entirely at odds with the one under discussion in the first half of the seminar. So what she offers her students is not so much packaged information as a method for packaging information.”
Finally, for all of her talents inside the classroom, Karen earns wide praise for the other ways in which she encourages and supports her students. Whether taking them to a Spinoza symposium in New York, inviting them to her home for her popular “Philosophy in Film” discussions, or simply making the effort to learn the names of all the students in her large lecture courses, Karen is admired as a teacher who takes that extra step to connect with her students.
Michael Gamer: College of General Studies Award for Distinguished Teaching by Standing Faculty
Michael is an Associate Professor of English who is already one of SAS’s most highly-decorated teachers. He has previously won the School’s highest teaching honor, the Ira Abrams Award, as well as the University’s Lindback Award. Michael has reputation as an unusually challenging teacher, but one for whom students have enormous respect. A faculty member notes that “The workload in his classes is not heavy simply in terms of quantity, but in terms of qualitative expectations. What Michael does that really sets him apart is to change his students’ sense of what constitutes quality work in our discipline.” In addition, another colleague notes that “Of all our faculty, [Michael] has made the most strenuous and ongoing effort to rethink pedagogical issues, to reinvent his courses and his own classroom practices, to make pedagogy itself a constant object of his critical attention.”
Taken together, these qualities have led Michael to shape the CGS curriculum in exciting ways. He revamped our summer Penn-in-London program, adding courses with like Novel Urban Spectacles, Romantic Drama, and British Poetry and Painting. A faculty member writes that “Each of these courses integrates the syllabus with the surrounding environment, building the rich cultural resources of London – theater, art, architecture – into the curriculum.” Michael has developed what has become a popular course for the Master of Liberal Arts program on Law and Literature, about which one student wrote rather candidly, “This has been my favorite class in the program by far. It has been challenging and stimulating and made me not mind working my a** off.” Michael’s influence in CGS is seen in more indirect ways as well. As a member of the CGS Executive Committee, he has long concerned himself with the overall quality of our undergraduate course offerings. And a colleague notes that even Michael’s superb mentorship of English doctoral students has had an impact on CGS instruction, since many of his students have taught CGS courses. For all of these reasons, Michael is richly deserving of the CGS Distinguished Teaching Award.
Deborah Burnham: College of General Studies Distinguished Teaching Award Lecturers
Deborah is a Lecturer in English who has taught a broad spectrum of courses in CGS on poetry, fiction, and non-fiction writing. A colleague describes her as “a one-woman curricular force.” She has taught at the undergraduate level and in the Master of Liberal Arts program, supervised countless independent studies and capstone projects, and served as an advisor for many CGS students. Students appreciate the personal attention that they receive from Deborah through the long hours that she spends with them discussing their papers. Others commend the way that she leads classroom discussion; one student writes, “She is willing to entertain all sides of a discussion and is careful not to show any allegiance to any single idea, thus making sure that her students are similarly open to new possibilities or interpretations.”
Of her teaching to the diverse age range of CGS students, a colleague observes, “What a difficult balancing act it is for a teacher to keep engaging the intellectual interests of her older students without losing the attentions of her younger and perhaps less practiced underclassmen. But [Deborah] does it, and her success comes from her ability to treat students on their own terms, each one of them, even as they are all convened in one class.” The end result is a teacher for whom students have only the highest praise. One writes that Deb is “easily been the most influential teacher I have had at Penn.” and another says that she is “without a doubt, my favorite teacher at the university, and perhaps in my entire life.” We are thrilled to recognize Deb’s exemplary service to CGS students by presenting her with the College of General Studies Distinguished Teaching Award.
