Former Students Recognize Superior Professors Through Brown Award

Former Students Recognize Superior professors Through Brown Award

By David Kaplan
Rice News Staff

When he was a student in college, John Ambler decided to become a
teacher, he says, because “I thought teaching was the kind of profession
where you stay alive.” He also saw the classroom as a place where he would
have the opportunity to make a difference in a young person’s life.

Ambler, a professor of political science, is indeed having an impact on
students’ lives. He and five other Rice professors are recipients of the
1997 George R. Brown Awards for Superior Teaching. The $1,500 awards are
based on voting by alumni who received their four-year bachelor degrees in
’92 and ’95.

The other winners are Marco A. Ciufolini, associate professor of
chemistry; Chandler Davidson, professor of sociology; Eugenia Georges,
associate professor of anthropology; Stephen Klineberg, professor of
sociology; and Elizabeth Long, associate professor of sociology.

Klineberg notes “a kind of a funny feedback delay” in receiving such a
prize: “You’re teaching today but being rewarded for something you did
several years ago. It’s tremendously rewarding, nevertheless, to realize
people who have been two or five years away from your classes and out in the
real world, are looking back with gratitude.”

Klineberg says one of his aims as a teacher is “to fill the short amount
of time I have in the classroom with intellectual excitement and challenge.”
He also believes that it takes “enormous amounts of time” and “real
commitment and effort” to teach well. Klineberg’s specialty is using survey
research to study contemporary social change.

Similarly, Ambler, whose specialty is European politics, believes the
keys to good teaching are preparation combined with a dynamic presentation.
“It’s hard to get students excited unless they see that you find the
material exciting and important yourself,” he says.

Long says one of her teaching goals is to help students feel empowered
about their critical thinking skills and to trust their own perceptions. She
also strives to convey to students her sense of excitement about social
thought and sociology.

One of her most rewarding teaching experiences recently has been her
work with a student “who’s got great ideas but doesn’t have great writing
skills. I got a team of support going for him, and we’re now working
intensively on his writing. It’s wonderful to see his development.”

Reflecting on his teaching style, Marco A. Ciufolini says he is
“extremely rigorous in the way the material is presented. I think students
at Rice are sophisticated enough to see that a class in which they have to
do a good deal of work is ultimately to their advantage. The fact that I
have been getting teaching awards despite the fact that Chem 211 is very
difficult and the grading scale is very severe reflects very positively on
the Rice students.”

Ciufolini notes that his student evaluations often say that his course
transcends the focus of organic chemistry and provides them with
intellectual tools which enable them to confront any kind of problem. “It
pleases me because that’s what I strive to do,” he says.

Georges says that besides feeling passionate about her subject matter,
“I try to take the students very seriously. … I start my task as a teacher
from where they’re coming from rather than try to impose my standards of
where they `should’ be coming from.”

Davidson, whose area of specialty is the politics of social inequality,
especially regarding race and class, believes an important element in good
teaching is being provocative and controversial. “I can’t imagine being a
good teacher in the humanities and social sciences without raising
controversies or making people rethink basic premises. So, I try to ask
unsettling questions.”