The University will recognize the recipients of the Goergen Awards for Contributions to Undergraduate Education in the College on Friday, September 7, at the College Convocation.

 

Andrew Berger, associate professor of optics and biomedical engineering
Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching

Berger teaches courses in subjects such as electromagnet theory and biomedical optics. His research in biomedical optics, specifically spectroscopic diagnostic techniques, is helping to advance optical technology. He joined the faculty in 2000.

“Oddly enough, I remember precisely when my teaching light turned on. It was the beginning of sophomore year at college, when I saw a flyer about volunteering to tutor in the local public schools. Without any prior awareness of a yen for working with students, I got excited about this, went to an organizational meeting, and wound up meeting weekly with a high school science club. Looking back, I proposed some truly terrible activities—but we all had a good time, and I learned a lot, even from the mistakes. . . . Who knows why the light turned on, but it’s stayed on ever since. “My toolbox for undergraduate teaching includes a lot of no-brainers like showing my own enthusiasm, trying to get students engaged, and being as accessible as possible outside the classroom. But there also are things that I’ve picked up only from listening to people who know a lot about teaching. For instance, I’ve learned to wait a long time after I ask a question, rather than filling in the silence after two seconds. It’s surprising how many more responses you get that way—and what a larger percentage of students will speak up. Also, I’ve gotten humbler about thinking of the lecture as the core of the students’ learning experience. While I do permit myself to expound upon favorite side topics, I feel most comfortable when class time directly illuminates the problem set.”

 

Robert Holmes, professor of philosophy
Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching

Holmes is a world-renowned expert on issues of peace and nonviolence, and specializes in ethic and in social and political philosophy. He joined the Rochester faculty in 1962. At Rochester, he has also received the Edward Peck Curtis Award for Undergraduate Teaching in 2001 and Professor of the Year Award in Humanities in 2006.

“What inspired me to go into teaching? In truth, nothing. My initial inspiration was to go into philosophy. Most philosophers have to teach to put food on the table, so I taught. It was hard work and took time away from writing. But there was a part of me that liked it. “I came to wonder, though, whether what I was doing was worthwhile. I could teach what other philosophers had said and load students up with theories. In the process, I could teach them how to reason. Those things were valuable, but there wasn’t much there that diligent students couldn’t learn on their own. And without paying an arm and a leg to take college courses.

“I eventually came to feel that all I could really do of importance was encourage learning—help open students’ minds to the excitement learning brings and the enrichment of life it promises. This transformed teaching for me, and I became something of a partner with the students. The process was a cooperative one, in which I was learning as well. What had been an ember of satisfaction gradually became a joy.
“I’ve always loved philosophy. I only gradually came to love teaching. But in the process—and perhaps most importantly of all—I came to love my students as well.”

 

Claudia Schaefer, professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures
Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching

At Rochester since 1977, Schaefer’s teaching and research encompass all aspects of cultural production in Latin America and Spain of the 20th and 21st centuries. She has developed and taught courses for the Film and Media Studies Program, for Women’s Studies, and in the Comparative Literature Program.

“Learning is a collective aspiration articulated in a variety of voices. Over the short term, it is a pact between instructor and students sealed by a syllabus. In the longer term, learning is a pact with oneself. It might begin in a limited situation, but it continues to inhabit us wherever we are long after a classroom community disbands. As I see it, my role is to turn the former into the latter, the provisional alliance into the lifelong challenge. “I wish to inspire students as citizens of different classes, communities, origins, and national groups to keep listening and questioning as their individual circumstances change. Remaining engaged with others in a productive way is the potential each of us holds. The tools for this engagement—critical thinking, careful listening, logical argumentation, and linguistic precision—can
come from the synergy of intellectual debate starting in the classroom.

“Stories about things we discover and how we tell them to one another are the medium through which we tread common ground, lose ourselves among others, then find ourselves as individuals once again enriched by our experiences. Communicating an awareness of culture as a living thing, something we are interpellated into and we contribute to from the start, propels us into the realm of the world as the true classroom, or the classroom as a compelling component of the larger (but not separate) world.”

 

Take Five Scholars Program
Goergen Award for Curricular Achievement in Undergraduate Education in the College

This year’s award will recognize the Take Five Program. Twice a year since the program’s inception in 1986, a select group of students is chosen from among the many applicants to pursue individual projects for a fifth year of study tuition-free. The program broadens the scope of undergraduate education by allowing students to explore new subjects outside their majors. Suzanne O’Brien, associate dean of undergraduate studies and director of the College Center for Academic Support, discusses the broad benefits of the program:

“A recent Take Five Scholar summed it up this way: ‘It is an amazing feeling to learn for the sake of learning, without expectations of degree or professional training. I will always be thankful for this year at the University.’ “The first student graduated from the Take Five program 20 years ago, and more than 800 students have benefited from the University’s generosity since then, enjoying a tuition-free fifth year, pursuing an enormous variety of fascinating topics, for the sake of learning. The students, who have convinced the members of the Take Five review board of the value of their undertakings, bring their intellectual passions to the classroom and their experience and energy to the campus. The faculty inspire, challenge, and teach. The entire community is richer because this unique program exists.”