Klineberg Earns Top Teaching Honor at Rice University

CONTACT: Michael Cinelli
PHONE: (713) 831-4794

KLINEBERG EARNS TOP TEACHING HONOR AT RICE UNIVERSITY

Talk to students in Stephen Klineberg’s
sociology classes and they will tell you he listens.

To Klineberg, professor of sociology, students are a vital
source of insight and perspective so he gives them his full
attention. They respond by stopping him in hallways and waiting by
his door to ask him questions. He always listens.

This year, the alumni had their say when they awarded Klineberg
the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the most
prestigious award granted by Rice for teaching.

“You can tell that he cares about what he is talking about,”
said Maryana Iskander, a Wiess senior majoring in sociology. “He
asks questions and then listens to your answers. In the classroom,
this is another of his greatest strengths, he listens to his
students.”

Klineberg’s students describe his actions in the classrooms as
excited. His hands are constantly in motion, and once he starts on a
subject he runs with it. Outside of class he is always available to
answer questions.

“He always sounds as if the point that he is making is the most
important point he has ever made in his entire life,” said Joel
Riphagen, a Brown senior who has taken Klineberg’s large and small
classes. “I can tell you that the man knows how to keep your
attention. I doubt I’ll ever forget him.”

Obviously the alumni remember Klineberg because they are the
ones who awarded him the prize for excellence in teaching. Alumni with four-year undergraduate degrees who graduated two
years and five years ago vote for a Rice professor to receive the
$6,000 prize. The Brown teaching award has been given annually since
1967.

“The essence of good teaching is really caring about what you’re
talking about and believing that these are ideas that matter,”
Klineberg said.

He used to cringe when people wrote teacher evaluations
describing his teaching style as enthusiastic. Later as his
classroom style matured, he realized that if as a teacher he was not
enthusiastic then how could students be enthused about the subject.

“I think [enthusiasm] is an important ingredient in thinking
what you’re teaching matters,” he said. “You want to make sure the
time you have together in the classroom, which is precious and
short, that that time is spent on really important and useful
things. It’s fairly easy to do when you teach courses as I do on
contemporary social change on the challenges facing America and
Houston.”

The experience at Rice rests upon the quality of the students
and the their ability to strike to the core of issues, he said.

“I think the teaching awards are a wonderful reminder to the
university that this is what really matter,” Klineberg said. “[Teaching] is what we are about. The pressures are so powerful for
giving short shrift to the classroom and focusing instead on
research that enhances the national and international reputation of
the university. Teaching plays very little role in that reputation,
because the teaching reputation is local. [Teaching] is the core and
the gut of the center of what this university is about.”

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