Davidson Awarded Prize for Excellence

Davidson Awarded Prize for Excellence

BY DAVID KAPLAN
Rice News Staff
May 7, 1998

Professor of Sociology and Political Science Chandler Davidson has recurring
"teaching anxiety dreams." In one, he’s in a packed amphitheater that’s
buzzing with excitement over his soon-to-be-delivered lecture. After he begins
speaking, audience members begin to file out of the room until he’s eventually
left with about six people, all of whom have glazed looks in their eyes.

Not so in real life. He is the winner of the 1998 George R. Brown Prize for
Excellence in Teaching, Rice’s most prestigious teaching award. Alumni who graduated
two and five years ago vote on the $6,000 prize.

His students and colleagues believe that Davidson deserves the award both for
his teaching and for who he is.

Says Professor of History Allen Matusow, who has known Davidson for 30 years:
"Chandler is that rare person who has the highest values and actually tries
to live them. I think our alums voted him the Brown prize not only because he
is conscientious, cares about every student, and shows his classes an America
they hardly know exists. They voted for him because he has character and lives
a special kind of life. Chandler stands just as high with faculty as with students
and for the very same reasons."

A modest fellow, Davidson doesn’t consider himself to be a "born teacher,"
but says that as soon as he got to Rice in ’66 he discovered "how pleasurable
teaching can be, although also very difficult." Before teaching he sold
real estate, Fuller brushes, and worked in the oil fields.

From his mother and aunts–West Texas public school teachers–he learned that
teaching was "extremely important." He’s also been inspired by the
"many world-class teachers" at Rice, and notes a healthy sense of
competition among the faculty.

He credits the sociology department with putting an emphasis on good teaching,
and says Professor William Martin, whose Excellence in Teaching Award jersey
has been retired, "probably more than any one else, set the department
standard."

"I have always considered the sociology department to be a kind of a family,"
says Davidson, who has chaired the department for a combined 10 years. His area
of specialty is the politics of social inequality.

"What makes him such a tremendous teacher is his genuine interest in every
student in his classroom," says David Grossman ’97, who took Davidson’s
"Sociological Approaches to Poverty" class as a freshman. "He
not only encourages intellectual curiosity, but nourishes its growth in every
conceivable way."

Rhodes Scholar Maryana Iskander ’97 describes Davidson as "a man who teaches
simply by the way he lives. From his early days as a civil rights activist,
Chandler had never backed down from saying what needs to be said. Sometimes
his positions are unpopular, but one can always be sure that he has thought
through those positions, and would be willing to take just about anybody out
to lunch to explain himself."