Shannon McCurdy (left) with Jeffrey Grote
|
Shannon McCurdy (left) with Jeffrey Grote
|
Spanish and Portuguese, IUB
Because students often approach required foreign language courses with a mixture of indifference and anxiety, Grote tries to make his classroom an open, low-stress environment in which students can learn and experience more than just the Spanish language. He uses humor and lighthearted discussion as a means to become acquainted with each of his students personally and by incorporating information from outside the Spanish curriculum which can be synthesized into the daily lesson. Grote created a manual for new instructors at the 100 level and worked with another to compile a corresponding set of materials for the 200 level. In the spring of 1997, he was awarded the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Associate InstructorTeaching Award.
Related Link:
http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/spdept.html
 Camilla Saulsbury (left) with Walter Jacobs
|
Walter Jacobs
Sociology, IUB
Jacobs' department chair has written of him: "Using an approach which requires students to see him (and eventually themselves) in the material, Walt has been able to bring to life critical and sensitive issues of race and power which, historically, have offered a challenge in the teaching of sociology to predominantly white middle- and working-class students." Jacobs calls this method "the teacher as text, a strategy of using our personal experiences as teachers and individuals to help our students make sense of their own increasingly fragmented, partial and unstable perceptions and practices." He has received the Department of Sociology's Edwin H. Sutherland Award for Excellence in and Commitment to Teaching.
Related Link:
 Todd Paddock (left), Terri Winnick and Aaron Culley
|
Sociology, IUB
Students give Winnick's courses (especially Sociological Aspects of Mental Illness, which she developed) overwhelmingly positive feedback. She organizes several trips each semester for her class to visit Madison State Hospital, a home for the mentally ill. Spending a day living with these people constitutes genuine understanding of the matters discussed in the classroom. Winnick's concern is evident in the many E-mail messages she sends out to individual students--reminding about upcoming events, prodding for overdue assignments‹and in the electronic conversations that result. Her ability to nurture these connections with her students has earned official recognition in the form of the Department of Sociology's Edwin H. Sutherland Award for Excellence in and Commitment to Teaching in 1996.
Related Link:
Return to Table of Contents