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 Cookman Photo by Heather Hill "When a faculty member is not convinced that it is possible to have discussions in high-enrollment classes or wonders how to get students to learn collaboratively, I send them to one of Professor Cookman's classes. They epitomize the best college teaching, for students are challenged to learn new kinds of thinking and are supported as they try them out." --Joan Middendorf, director, IU Teaching Resources Center |
Claude Cookman's career--featuring daily journalism experience as a photo, graphics and copy editor at newspapers as varied as the Anderson Herald, the Miami Herald and the Courier Journal and Louisville Times where he shared the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography with the photo staff--brings a strong practical background to his classroom at IU. But it is the collaborative, student-centered teaching style that has earned him the lasting appreciation of his students and the respect of his colleagues.
In a syllabus, Cookman explained his approach this way: "You own your own education. You are responsible for it here at Indiana University and for the rest of your life. I will derive great pleasure from helping you achieve as much as you choose to accomplish this semester. But I refuse to push, prod, bribe, shame, trick, cajole or otherwise manipulate you into working and learning. I hope you will learn for the personal satisfaction of learning--not for a grade and not to please me or anyone else except yourself."
"When I first heard him, I thought he was nuts," said Glen Bleske, a journalism professor at California State University at Chico and 1997 California journalism teacher of the year. "I knew students worked for grades, and I used grades to motivate students. He eventually convinced me I was wrong. His respect for students and the learning process led me to change my teaching. Now, I help students become independent learners."
Cookman teaches computerized publication design, visual communications and history of photography, allowing students various choices of assignments and asking them to evaluate their work when they have finished. Through it all, he remains focused on a simple pedagogical philosophy: "First, learning is a fundamental dimension of what it means to be human. Second, my role as a teacher is to help my students achieve their full intellectual, emotional and moral potential."
Cookman's teaching skills have been recognized with the Teaching Excellence Recognition Award in 1998, the IU Alumni Association Student Choice Award for distinguished teaching in 1994, and the Gretchen A. Kemp Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching from the School of Journalism in 1993.
Related Link:
http://www.journalism.indiana.edu/
 Einertz Photo courtesy of Wishard Health Services |
"Our experience meant...living in and understanding another culture, making the world seem smaller than it did before, giving a little something because we could, frustration and sadness when we couldn't give enough, deep gratitude for our country and health care system, learning new and creative ways to deliver care, singing songs without caring if you knew what the words meant, knowing it was coming from your heart and theirs." --Dr. Joe Mamlin, co-founder of the IU-Moi University medical exchange program in Indiana Medicine |
In 1990, Dr. Robert Einterz and several of his colleagues developed the Indiana University-Moi University exchange program. Each year, approximately 25 IU medical students and residents travel to Moi University, in Eldoret, Kenya, to study, do research and teach. Up to six Kenyan medical students spend the same amount of time at IU. The mission of the program, in Einterz's words, is "to empower each institution to challenge its students and faculty to discover the common vision and values fundamental to the profession of medicine."
Students return to IU "changed human beings," a colleague noted. As the program has grown, other major universities have become involved, leading to the formation of the America/Sub-Saharan Network for Training and Education in Medicine (ASANTE-Medicine).
Einterz's students at IU are direct beneficiaries of his commitment. "We hope to change not just people, but institutions," Einterz said in a recent article about the Moi program. "It doesn't happen overnight; it's a process that takes generations. But we have so much to learn from one another."
Related Links:
http://dmed.iupui.edu/int_prg.html
http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/091198/text/kenya.htm
 Itter Photo by Heather Hill "Professor Itter taught me how to draw by improving my technique without destroying my individualism." --Joanna Murray, former undergraduate student |
"If you can draw circles, squares, lines and curves, you can draw anything," said Joanna Murray, one of Itter's former undergraduate students. "Professor Itter taught me how to draw by improving my technique without destroying my individualism." His insistence that students develop the concentration, patience and perseverance to master the basics has led more than one student to recognize that the principles learned in his classroom become the foundation for greater discoveries.
As part of his role as co-director of the Fundamental Studio Program, Itter is also a teacher of teachers. He has made his classes an exciting arena for discovery and the introductory studio courses a rewarding context for faculty and graduate students for learning and teaching. He is, said one colleague, "an advocate of deep noticing."
His works are in public and private collections throughout the United States.
Related Link:
http://www.fa.indiana.edu/fina/fundamentals.html#faculty
 Kleinbauer Photo by Heather Hill "Professor Kleinbauer lectures as if he is moving down a ladder, picking up students at whatever rung they are on, and taking them up that ladder as far as they can go." -- Diana Hilvers, IU doctoral student |
But not all great art is present at locations that Hoosier students can visit, so like other art history teachers, he often relies on high-quality slides or educational videos to bring images of art into the classroom, to show a Mesopotamian ziggurat or 6th-century Viking helmet, for instance.
When it's time for students to study on their own, to look closely again and synthesize all he's taught them and all they've seen, textbook illustrations alone often aren't enough. Kleinbauer has helped solve that problem by pioneering the campus use of the World Wide Web so that students can be virtually present with great art wherever they are. With on-line review of the IU Slide Library's digitized images, which he introduced at IU in 1993, students can access thousands of images in computer labs or from home. Readers far beyond the bounds of IU can be counted among Kleinbauer's students, thanks to his scholarship and writing on the history of Western art. He specializes in medieval and Byzantine art and architecture and the artistic traditions of Islam.
The books Kleinbauer has written include Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture: An Annotated Bibliography and Historiography, and Research Guide to the History of Western Art. He is the editor of The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies by Ernst Kitzinger and Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Writings on the Visual Arts.
Related Link:
 Moller Photo by Heather Hill "He seemed never to forget that each of us is walking a little scared, a little shy, a little vulnerable through the complex maze of modern life. If I become a teacher with half the quality of this man, I will be a success." --former IU student Bruce Alan Beal, a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University |
Moller's class was life altering for at least one student who stepped into the challenge of helping her elderly mother recuperate from a massive stroke, despite having to arrange her work and academic schedules. The class made her "zero in on what life is really about--not what I can get from life, but what I can give."
Each semester, students from his death and dying, family, medical sociology or introduction to sociology course identify him as the best professor they've ever had. One of Moller's students--one who has taken every course he has offered--said he encouraged her to "think with her soul, not just with her mind."
Like all good teachers, Moller sees an inextricable link between teaching and research. He models the scholar's role and brings to the classroom the same enthusiasm, insight and creativity that have enabled him to produce notable contributions to scholarship of death and dying in America. Indeed, his research methodologies are applicable not only to his professional explorations of how our culture deals with death and dying, but also to curriculum and program development.
In an end-of-course thank you note, a student commented that while Moller's research and his remarkably popular course on death and dying have earned him the campus nickname "Dr. Death," those who have taken his course and understand his message see him not as Dr. Death, but as Dr. Life.
Related Link:
http://www.iupui.edu/~slasoc/SOCHOME.htm
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