UW honors top teachers of 1995
On the silver anniversary of the Distinguished Teaching Awards, faculty, students and alumni met to decide who to add to the list of top UW teachers, public servants and volunteers. They have come up with a remarkable list. Five are faculty who have won Distinguished Teaching Awards, two are TAs honored with Excellence in Teaching Awards, and five are members of the UW community recognized for their service by receiving either the UW Outstanding Public Service Award, the UW Recognition Award or the UW Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award. In addition, a special award is going to President William P. Gerberding in lieu of naming the annual Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus, the highest honor the UW bestows upon its graduates. Brief profiles of the honorees follow:
William P. Gerberding
Special Recognition
This issue of Columns would ordinarily feature an article on the winner of the 1995 Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus award, the highest honor the UW can bestow on a graduate. This year, however, the University and the Alumni Association decided to follow a precedent set in 1973 at the retirement of President Charles Odegaard and suspend the award in order to give special recognition to President William P. Gerberding’s 16 years of leadership. Gerberding will be honored at the UW Recognition Reception June 8 and at the 120th Commencement ceremonies June 10.
Steven Staryk
Distinguished Teaching Award
Even though he has been a concertmaster with four of the world’s major orchestras, Steven Staryk gets the most pleasure recalling the accomplishments of his students.
One is with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra. Another began her career as an assistant concertmistress. Yet another is first violin with a metropolitan symphony.
“In performing you are re-creating,” says Staryk. “But in teaching, you are creating.”
As head of the UW School of Music’s string division for the past eight years, Staryk has had a major impact on the lives and careers of many students. For his ability to motivate his students to excel, he was named a winner of the 1995 Distinguished Teaching Award.
“Professor Staryk is a great violinist, yet he treats all his students as equals,” wrote one student in nominating him for the award. “(Because of him), I am playing the violin beyond my original expectations.”
The passion to excel is something Staryk, the son of a Ukranian immigrant, has known all his life. “I was brought up in a very hard, pragmatic environment,” he says. “There was always someone there to remind me that whatever I could do, there was somebody out there who could do it better.”
As someone who has taught the violin for more than 30 years and been a concertmaster with the Royal Philharmonic of London, the Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Chicago Symphony and Toronto Symphony, Staryk is a master at getting the most out of his students who are tackling a difficult instrument. “It is not natural to play the violin,” he says. “It takes a very talented person seven or eight years before things start coming together.”
Yet Staryk estimates that nearly three-quarters of his students have a very good chance of playing professionally in an extremely competitive field. Still, he is direct with his students in addressing their career potential. “It is my responsibility to be realistic with my students,” says Staryk, who joined the UW faculty in 1987.
But it is also his nature to inspire students to reach their potential. “I have not come across a more competent, challenging and thought-provoking mentor in all my years of study,” says one doctoral student.—Jon Marmor, Columns Associate Editor.
Gaetano Borriello and Carl Ebeling
Distinguished Teaching Award
In doubles tennis, they’d be called a dream team. Their department chair, Edward Lazowska, simply calls them “wonderful.”
As for themselves, Gaetano Borriello and Carl Ebeling are a little puzzled why they have been singled out to share a Distinguished Teaching Award this year—as opposed to the whole Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
“I think it’s pretty fair to say that almost everyone in this department is as deserving as we are,” says Borriello. But by all reports—from students and colleagues alike—Borriello and Ebeling merit special praise for their efforts to make a UW education in one of the world’s high-tech fields a singularly high-quality experience.
Borriello and Ebeling know students can’t waste precious time with professors who aren’t capable of integrating their research and educational activities; or with laboratories full of antiquated equipment; or with courses that leave only a little time at the end to put concepts into practice.
So in 1990, when the department set out to revamp its computer engineering bachelor’s degree program, it was natural to turn to Borriello and Ebeling for help. The two, then assistant professors, already had an enviable track record as researchers, including a prestigious award from the National Science Foundation. They also had a demonstrated commitment to involving students—graduates and undergraduates—in their research. As Borriello puts it, “Research and teaching go hand in hand; what we did would not have been as easy, or done at all, if the UW were not a research university.”
At the heart of the Borriello-Ebeling approach is a belief that students need to begin actually doing what they’re studying as quickly as possible—”not waiting for three courses, and then only in the final course actually doing things,” says Borriello, who joined the UW faculty in 1988, the same year he received his Ph.D. degree from Cal-Berkeley.
As part of the curriculum, students need first-rate laboratory facilities “so that they’re actually learning and putting into practice the concepts they learned in class and are able to get things done with a minimum amount of frustration,” explains Ebeling, who joined the UW faculty in 1986 after receiving his Ph.D. degree from Carnegie-Mellon.
Using this approach, computer engineering students build actual computer systems for use in real-world situations: a mobile robot vision system, for instance, and a wheelchair controller for students at Fircrest School.
Designing the ideal laboratory was one thing. Getting the equipment and tools for it was another, a task that illustrates what Lazowska means when he praises Borriello and Ebeling for their “Herculean” joint efforts.
“We tried out lots of things and finally settled on a particular approach and went to work for donations of software and equipment,” says Borriello. And there have been many special little touches, such as working with a department technician on custom designing a circuit design tool kit for students that fits in a standard tackle box.
Today, this relatively new program graduates 40 students a year and attracts students with average freshman/sophomore G.P.A.s of 3.75. Lazowska describes the program as “incredibly hot,” and he has no doubt that much of the credit for this goes to Borriello and Ebeling.
Student praise is equally rich: “Despite winning awards for their research,” writes one, “they are both personable and humble. They are easy to talk to, and they go out of their way to help students understand the material presented in class.”
Course evaluation comments seem to sum up how many students feel about both professors: “I came into this course feeling scared about whether I could ‘hack it,’ and your warmth and approachability encouraged me to do it anyway. I learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence. … You’ve been by far the best teacher I’ve had, and I hope you’ll be teaching for a long time.” —L.G. Blanchard, UW News and Information
Kelin Kuhn
Distinguished Teaching Award
Three-fourths of the way through Autumn Quarter, with less than three weeks to go, Kelin Kuhn worried that designing tiny electric cars that could track along a laser beam was too much for the design teams in her “Devises and Circuits” class.
“You want students to stretch but not be intimidated,” the associate professor of electrical engineering says. “Sometimes there are only about 11 microns between the two.”
Then, the first car was ready: It ran the course flawlessly in seven seconds. Kuhn says she could almost feel the other students thinking, “If Roy and Ben can do it…”
The electric-car design project incorporates many of the elements the Distinguished Teaching Award winner considers crucial to learning, such as hands-on work, experience in product design and new ways of presenting technical material.
Typically, lectures and their required labs are completely separate activities. In the lecture hall, Kuhn discusses labs and includes hands-on activities. Reverse engineering, for example, involves taking apart products. For “Freshman Design” students, the items include cameras, electric toothbrushes and sewing machines. For seniors in “Consumer Electronics,” it’s cassette tape recorders, TVs and CD-ROM players and recorders.
“Twenty years ago, if you were going to be an engineer, you usually came to college after having taken apart your car, your dad’s car or other kinds of machinery. Now we need to include that sort of thing in classes,” she says.
Students in many of Kuhn’s classes also design simulated products in order to apply the concepts they have learned. In a letter recommending Kuhn for the teaching award, a colleague said that her design projects exposed undergraduates, especially the younger students, “to the challenge and excitement of engineering design, a critical element in attracting and retaining top students.”
Kuhn finds her presentations a critical element in her success as well. In her first two years, she followed the way she’d been taught: a heavy emphasis on mathematical derivations needed in engineering. Kuhn now uses class time for teaching concepts and has moved the important, but sometimes ponderous, derivations and other fundamentals into notes she prepares specially for each class.
These and other approaches have earned her high marks on student evaluation forms and two National Science Foundation grants for curriculum development. Kuhn has been teaching since 1987, first with materials science and engineering and, since 1989, in electrical engineering.
Kuhn does not find research and teaching to be mutually exclusive, even at a major research institution such as the UW. Her own research currently focuses on engineering low-cost environmental sensors. Her $300 sensor to monitor water levels in streams and lakes, for example, appears to rival the $15,000 sensors in use today.
“We owe the people of the state a service to teach their children,” she says. “We also owe the people of the state a service to extend the limits of knowledge. These are not incompatible goals.”—Sandra Hines, UW News and Information
David Madigan
Distinguished Teaching Award
March 14, 1995, is a day that always will be etched in David Madigan’s memory. It was a day filled with personal and professional fulfillment for the assistant professor of statistics.
He will always remember it as the birth date of his first child, a son, Cian Denis. It was also a day that validated his decision to become a teacher. Less than five years after changing careers and emigrating to the U.S. to accept a position at the UW, Madigan was named one of the winners of the 1995 Distinguished Teaching Award.
Madigan’s choice is surprising since he doesn’t teach flashy, popular courses that have waiting lists. Rather some of the courses he teaches are undergraduate statistics classes that students are required to take.
“These courses are challenging to teach. Students typically take them because they are forced to, not because they want to. … The material lends itself to being presented in a dry and abstract fashion, and most books are terrible. Despite all this, it is clear that David has made what used to be a dry and sometimes resented requirement into an enjoyable and rewarding experience for students,” wrote one colleague.
To do this, Madigan stresses concepts over formulas and calculation by using real-life examples drawn from medicine, forensic science, sociology and engineering. At the same time, he has also embraced modern technology and new instructional techniques. His students work cooperatively to solve problems over the World Wide Web, a graphic way of presenting information on the Internet. E-mail has become a vehicle that allows them ready access to Madigan.
At the same time, Madigan has an active interest in researching theories of learning. He is working with Earl Hunt of psychology and others in a new instructional method to update the curriculum of several statistics courses. Madigan is also working on a research project with investigators at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, transforming a text into a multimedia “computerized book” that can be constantly updated over the World Wide Web.
It’s not surprising that Madigan is a teacher. It runs in the family—his mother was a high school teacher. After earning his Ph.D. at Trinity College in Dublin, Madigan taught in Dublin for several years before working as a research fellow and consultant. He came to the UW in the fall of 1990 and he’s been drawing rave reviews ever since.
“When I arrived at the UW last summer … I was afraid that everything and everyone would be impersonal and unenthusiastic due to the sheer number of people. In many ways, it was Statistics 311 with Madigan that convinced me that was not the case. He was extremely enthusiastic and energetic, brimming over with examples and intuitive explanations. He seemed to understand a question even when the student wasn’t sure what he or she was asking. He encouraged feedback and questions. … Most importantly to me, he treated everyone in the class with respect, hearing them out and considering what they said, never talking down to a student or hastily dismissing his or her ideas,” says one student.—Joel Schwarz, UW News and Information
Jeff Barnhart
Excellence in Teaching Award
Jeff Barnhart’s teaching philosophy can be summarized with two goals: Keep them awake and keep them laughing.
“If the students are asleep, they aren’t going to learn,” says Barnhart, a teaching assistant in Romance Languages and Literature, and one of this year’s Excellence in Teaching Award winners. “And I’ve found if they’re laughing, they’re more open to learning.”
Barnhart, according to students, operates at a very high energy level but tries to keep the atmosphere light and fun. As one student noted, “He has endless amounts of energy. Because of this energy I wanted to learn, too.” Said another, “The whole class was involved in every lesson, many questions were asked, there wasn’t really time to not pay attention.”
This is not an easy task in classes such as Spanish 101, which many students may be taking because it fulfills a requirement. But even the most cynical students have been engaged by Barnhart’s approach. His evaluations are replete with comments like this: “Your enthusiasm and sense of humor really helped me—especially at first (when I really didn’t want to be in this class). This ended up being my favorite class this quarter—what a surprise!”
Besides expending great effort and thought in organizing his own classes, Barnhart has been a catalyst for the entire department. He has been a key participant in the planning and organization of an eight day orientation and in-service training for new and returning TAs. He also was a moving force behind the department’s mentoring program, which pairs new teaching assistants with veteran TAs. Barnhart’s energy and ideas have contributed to molding the TAs into a friendly, cohesive group that shares information and learns from one another.
Because of Barnhart’s success, he has taught the Spanish 101 demonstration class that acts as a model for other TAs. He also taught the graduate seminar in teaching methodology this past Autumn Quarter.
Barnhart’s research interests dovetail with his teaching. His dissertation includes an exploration of the reasons why older students find acquisition of a second language more difficult than very young learners, and what strategies can be developed to overcome these obstacles.
As for the obstacles that Barnhart confronts with UW students, he thinks carefully about different ways of teaching the material. “When I realize that some students aren’t getting it, I’ll try to present it in a totally different way, whether that means jumping up on a desk, making fun of myself, whatever. I’ll do it a second, third and fourth time until they get it.”
Students who are learning a new language often are embarrassed by their halting efforts at communicating simple ideas, but Barnhart deflects this by making fun of his own mistakes and by creating an open and relaxed atmosphere. “I’m more interested in having the students practice communicating, and less interested in the details of how they do it,” he says.
One of Barnhart’s innovations in the department was to propose a day in which discussions take place just in English, rather than in the language being taught. That’s the time when he and his students discuss what he calls, “the amazing process of learning a language.” Barnhart also uses that opportunity to talk about the value of learning Spanish—the third-most spoken language in the world—and the value that knowing Spanish may have for students later in life. “It not only helps to motivate the students, it’s also a good reminder for the TAs,” he says. —Bob Roseth, UW News and Information
Beth Oljar
Excellence in Teaching Award
Beth Oljar was visiting her parents in Portland when she got a phone call from President William P. Gerberding. The philosophy teaching assistant was a little startled, but deeply gratified, when she learned the call was to tell her she’d received an Excellence in Teaching Award.
“It was more thrilling to me to win this award than it would have been to have a paper published in an academic journal,” Oljar declares. That’s probably because teaching (“There’s nothing I don’t like about it”) is the love of her life. Yet she found it accidentally, just as she found philosophy accidentally—it was the funny thing that happened to her on the way to law school.
Oljar—the daughter of two UW alumni—did her undergraduate work at Portland State University, where she signed up for her first philosophy course “as a random experiment.” When she enjoyed it, she tried other philosophy courses. “They presented a kind of challenge that I’d never gotten before,” she says, “where you really had to ask questions and be impertinent in a way that you’re never encouraged to do in school.”
At first she decided to major in philosophy while retaining her plan of going to law school. But then Oljar got a chance to give a few lectures. “That was it. I was gone. I knew then and there that teaching was what I wanted to do with my life.”
Her love of teaching is evident to her UW students, who write glowing comments like these on her teaching evaluation forms: “Beth Oljar was one of, if not the best instructors I’ve had at the UW. She’s fair, helpful, understands students’ concerns, charming, intelligent and a hell of a teacher!” said one student.
In light of Oljar’s abilities, the department made her the lead TA in 1993, which means she organizes orientation for new graduate students. She also wrote a training handbook for departmental TAs.
Oljar has taught a wide variety of subjects, including “Practical Reasoning,” “Introduction to Ethics,” “Logic” and “Moral Issues in Life and Death.” In all of them, her methods are similar: Introduce a question, ask students what they believe, then ask them to defend it.
“A lot of the time, I take a view that’s fairly widely held, like that morality has to be understood in terms of God’s will, then ask students why people might think that was true. And what we do (in class discussion) is ask what the consequences are of taking that seriously. If you want to say, for example, that morally right means commanded by God, doesn’t that mean that God could command us to be serial murderers and that would be right? So students have to get underneath common sense or everyday claims and try to draw out more carefully what the implications of those claims would be.”
When she completes her studies next spring, Oljar would like to take a position teaching at a small liberal arts college. “I think I’m getting students to be better people, if only for the 50 minutes of class or for the quarter that I have them,” she says. “I do that by pushing them to question accepted beliefs instead of just taking what they’re told at face value, and helping them to appreciate an intellectual tradition and heritage.” —Nancy Wick, UW News and Information
Peter Domoto
UW Outstanding Public Service Award
Peter Domoto believes good dental care is something all children should have, no matter where they live or what their economic status. For the past 20 years, Domoto has backed his beliefs with extraordinary personal commitment and efforts to improve the oral health of disadvantaged children.
In recognition of his efforts, Domoto—chair of the UW Department of Pediatric Dentistry—has been named winner of the 1995 Outstanding Public Service Award. The award is given each year to the faculty or staff member who has made the greatest contribution to improving the quality of life through public service.
“Dr. Domoto is a true friend to Washington state’s neediest children,” says Juan Carlos Olivares, executive director of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic. “He has brought both help and hope to our dentists and our community.”
Early in his career, Domoto developed outreach programs that assigned dental students to clinics for disadvantaged children as part of their training. In 1987 Domoto expanded the outreach to include a two-week elective pediatric dentistry rotation at the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinics. These programs not only provide needed dental care to underserved children, they also sensitize future dentists to the needs of these children.
Central to Domoto’s public service are his efforts to eliminate Baby Bottle Tooth Decay by the year 2000. This dental malady can have a devastating effect on both the dental and overall health of children. Domoto works with the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children throughout Washington state to prevent dental caries in infants and toddlers. Among his innovative solutions is a training video available in both English and Spanish that teaches mothers and caretakers in the program how to identify early tooth decay.
In 1993, Domoto chaired the Children’s Dental Access Task Force as a member of the Washington State Oral Health Coalition. When he couldn’t find any reliable statewide information on the amount of oral disease in children, Domoto organized his own teams of dental students, faculty and dentists and sent them out to examine third graders at selected schools in each of Washington’s 39 counties. Domoto himself performed exams in eight different schools in four counties, traveling more than a thousand miles around the state.
His survey found that 20 percent of the children are experiencing more than 80 percent of the oral disease, and those most at risk are members of ethnic minorities who often face financial barriers to dental care. Domoto’s advocacy led to a pilot program in Spokane, where 80 private practitioners have agreed to treat low income at-risk children in their community. This project promises to serve as a model for community-based problem solving.
“Dr. Domoto has gone far beyond acting merely as an advocate for disadvantaged children,” explains Dentistry Dean Paul B. Robertson. “His efforts are paying off by producing dentists who are more attuned to the needs of these special children, making government agencies more aware of the real barriers to accessing care for these children, and proposing solutions that emanate from the communities.”
Domoto came to the UW in 1968 after receiving his D.D.S. from the University of California, San Francisco. He’s served as chair of pediatric dentistry since 1977.—Gail Neubert, Health Sciences and Medical Affairs News and Community Relations
Gerald Grinstein
John Nordstrom
Donald Petersen
UW Recognition Award
“When the Campaign for Washington began, a lot of people thought it was a mountain that couldn’t be climbed,” John Nordstrom observed after the campaign’s conclusion. But Nordstrom and Campaign Co-chairs Donald Petersen and Gerald Grinstein led the campaign over the top of its $250 million goal, to $284 million. Three years after the campaign ended, private giving to the UW continues to set records.
For their efforts in launching a new era of private support for the University of Washington, Petersen, Nordstrom, and Grinstein received the 1995 UW Recognition Award.
“The campaign was an important milestone in the development of the University of Washington,” says President William P. Gerberding. “To undertake such a large-scale and high-risk effort required a terrific leadership team. We were fortunate these three gentlemen agreed to co-chair the campaign when we asked them to do so.”
Donald E. Petersen graduated from the UW with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1946. He spent his career with the Ford Motor Company, from which he retired as chairman and CEO in March of 1990. Among the honors received during his career, he was voted CEO of the year in 1989 by readers of Chief Executive Officer magazine. He was honored by the University of Washington with its Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus Award in 1981. During the Campaign for Washington, Petersen chaired the Advance Gifts Committee, which sought leadership gifts and pledges prior to the campaign’s public announcement.
John N. Nordstrom graduated from the UW with a degree in business administration in 1959. He is co-chairman of Nordstrom, Inc., and a member of one of the Northwest’s most prominent families, three generations of which have attended the University of Washington. John Nordstrom has been an active supporter and advocate for the University, and was president of the UW Alumni Association 1977-78. During the Campaign for Washington, he chaired the Leadership Gifts Committee, which sought gifts of $1 million or more from individuals.
Gerald Grinstein, although not a graduate of the University of Washington, has been a longtime friend and advocate for the UW. His family connections to the UW include his father, Alexander Grinstein, who not only graduated from the UW but also served as team physician to Husky football players for many years. Gerald Grinstein, as administrative assistant to the late Senator Warren Magnuson, was involved in the federal support for the University that helped create and nurture outstanding programs in the health sciences. Now Chairman and CEO of Burlington Northern Inc., Grinstein is far
from the Northwest geographically, but retains close ties to the University. During the Campaign for Washington, he chaired the Corporation/Foundation Gifts Committee.
“Many other people played large and indispensable roles in the Campaign,” says Gerberding, “but the leadership of the co-chairs was critically important. We are very much in their debt.” —Antoinette Wills, Office of Development
Jon Bridgman
UWAA Distinguished Service Award
World War II has been over for 50 years, but for the past six years, it has come alive on Wednesday nights in Kane Hall. That’s when History Professor Jon Bridgman has taken the floor and delivered his long-running and wildly popular lecture series offered through the UW Alumni Association.
As a history scholar for the past 34 years, Bridgman knows very well the sense of history alumni have with their alma mater. “Alumni are a very important part of the University community,” says Bridgman, who joined the UW faculty in 1961 and has been giving alumni association lectures for the past 10 years. “The UW consists of its students, its faculty—and its alumni. Their attitude is very important to the University. You hope you build a sense of loyalty.”
With his years of unflagging service, Bridgman has fortified that sense of loyalty among thousands of alumni through the lectures and travel tours he has conducted for the alumni association. He was a natural selection to be honored with the 1995 UWAA Distinguished Service Award.
Bridgman’s appetite for sharing his knowledge seems to know no bounds. His ability to use anecdotes to make dates, times and other facts easy to digest have made him one of the alumni association’s—and the University’s—most popular professors.
His secret? Hard work. He estimates that he spends about 30 hours researching and writing in preparation for each lecture. Every lecture he gives— for class or his alumni association series—is new. “I’m not a particularly polished lecturer,” says Bridgman. “I fumble around and I have trouble finding words sometimes. I do have quite a bit of energy. It’s just nerves.”
His lectures have struck a nerve with his audience. Regularly, 600 people pack Kane 130 to hear him speak. While his topic is indeed popular, it his style, energy and wit that make his lecture series and travel tours such a big hit. A fast speaker, he paces back and forth in front of his lectern and injects life into his subject and makes history real for his audience.
“The audience is always very good,” says Bridgman, 64, who, by his own estimation, has given approximately 20,000 lectures since he started teaching at the UW in 1961, and shows no signs of slowing down. “And they are very generous at the alumni association. It is a luxury to give a lecture with all that assistance.”
The alumni association, no doubt, feels the same way.—Jon Marmor, Columns Associate Editor