Distinguished
Teaching Award
October,
2001
Shirley
Chiang
In the relatively short time since
Professor Shirley Chiang came to the UCD Physics Department from industry in
the mid-1990s it is already clear that she has had a positive and lasting
impact on many undergraduate and graduate students. The nominators attributed Professor Chiang's success as an
instructor to three important elements: "i) an exceptional willingness to
devote her time to students, ii) the development of [courses] that emphasize
the connection between course material and modern physics and technology, and
iii) a willingness to explore and participate in novel teaching methods and
settings." The Distinguished
Teaching Award Committee saw extensive evidence to support the enthusiasm of
the nominators.
Examples of Professor Chiang's
willingness to devote time to students are numerous, from holding up to five
hours a week extra office hours for a difficult course, to holding her
laboratory open in off hours, to mentoring large numbers of undergraduate and
graduate students. Supporting comments
indicate that she is "extremely knowledgeable, yet approachable",
that she puts students first and views research and teaching as equally worthwhile
pursuits, that she is very accessible and devoted to both undergraduate and
graduate students, and that she employs teaching and mentoring techniques
commensurate with different needs and styles of different students.
Professor Chiang's has developed
courses that deal successfully with the "delicate balance between
presenting fundamental background concepts, which are often 'old', while
maintaining contact with new and exciting developments in the field as it is
today." In Physics 200BC she
illustrates that novel applications are continuously being found in electricity
and magnetism, "phenomena that have been known to mankind for thousands of
years." In Physics 243B,
Introduction to Surface Science, a course at the forefront of modern research,
Professor Chiang has solved challenging problems by developing course materials
in absence of a suitable textbook and by developing problems that are simple
yet important.
Professor Chiang makes concerted and
continuing efforts to be an innovative instructor. Thus her attendance at the American Association of Physics
Teachers New Faculty Conference in 1996 resulted in the use of peer-teaching
methods. In Physics 115A she had
students write summaries based on textbook readings and devoted a significant
portion of class time to small group work.
In Fall 1997 she taught a Freshman Seminar on the Physics of Music in
her home, using numerous personal musical instruments, computers, and MIDI
instruments and software to demonstrate principles pertaining to class
work. As a final project students were
asked to build a musical instrument.
The Vice Chair's assessment of
Professor Chiang's teaching success in lower division, upper division, and
graduate courses, that, "Over the past few years, some of the most
enthusiastic student comments on teaching in the Physics Department have
concerned Professor Shirley Chiang," were confirmed by the consistently
high ratings and comments in the student evaluations that accompanied her file.
Professor Chiang has supervised a
number of undergraduate research projects in her laboratory. The students, some of whom are among the
best undergraduates in the Physics Department, worked on a variety of projects,
some of which led to the publication of original research papers. The graduate students who have worked with
Professor Chiang are very appreciative of regular discussions she provides on
the progress of their research and about future career paths. Between 1996 and 2000 her students gave
nineteen talks and poster presentations, and her students have been generally
very well-placed. For example, one
student with whom she worked was the youngest astronaut accepted by NASA in
1998.
Professor Chiang has also been
engaged in a number of educational outreach efforts. For example, in April of 1998 she gave a lecture entitled
"The Scanning Tunneling Microscope: An Instrument for Imaging Atoms"
at the Explorit Science Center in Davis.
In April of 2001 she gave hands-on demonstrations relating to waves and
the scanning tunneling microscope for three seventh-grade classes at Holmes Junior
High School.
Her nominators and the DTA Committee
concur that Professor Chiang also fulfills a vital role for women students in
the Physics Department. According to
her nominators: "the number of female students presently in, or graduates
of, Professor Chiang's lab is quite remarkable in a discipline in which only 15
percent of the graduate students nationwide are female." By working so hard to encourage women to
pursue science, she is making an important contribution to the diversity of the
campus.
Additional comments from the letters
and student evaluations are representative of a much larger collection of
similar comments:
"Her
office is always open and she is always willing to entertain questions or
discuss problems."
"Dr.
Chiang is one of the most compassionate professors I have had . . . I believe
Dr. Chiang is a great professor . . . "
"It
has been three years since that [Freshman Seminar] . . . but I remember it like
it was last quarter. Her creative
instruction made a lasting impression on me.
I really enjoyed her course."
"
. . . Dr. Chiang gave many hours of her time, and did so graciously . . . she
showed great interest in students' understanding and progress. I have never known a professor more
dedicated and helpful than she."
"She
welcomed input from her students, and at times she would ask the class if we
had any ideas about a topic that had stumped her. This attitude made her extremely approachable in and out of
class."
"It
is hard not to be passionate about her class."
"She
gives her students an interpersonal space in which they can make inevitable
mistakes and learn from them, rather than make mistakes and merely be ashamed
of them."
"Professor
Chiang has shown enthusiasm for my progress and accomplishments and I believe
she truly cares about her students, both in the lab and in the classroom
In summary, the Committee feels that
Professor Chiang's teaching embodies those aspects of distinguished teaching
that merit recognition by the campus.
She excels in traditional teaching activities such as lectures, and she
is eager to try and has had much success with innovative approaches. We saw ample evidence of her devotion to
students and of her willingness to give time to students, often on a one-to-one
basis, in ways that are most beneficial to the individual students. The breadth of her teaching successes is
truly impressive. We believe that she
is an extraordinary teacher and agree with the nominators that she is
"clearly an exceptional role model for women in science." In recognition of her many achievements we
are pleased to present Professor Shirley Chiang this well-deserved 2001
Distinguished Teaching Award.
October,
2001
Christopher
Reynolds
The Distinguished Teaching Award
Committee is pleased to bestow a 2001 Distinguished Teaching Award on
Christopher Reynolds, Professor of Music.
The Committee was particularly
impressed by students', former students', as well as colleagues', uniformly
high praise for Professor Reynolds' extraordinary dedication to teaching and
mentoring. Student after student
commented on Reynolds' passion for music and his passion for teaching others
about that passion. One student speaks
for many when she says: "I don't think teaching people about music will
ever be just a job for Chris. I suspect
it will always remain something that he loves and something that he's
passionate about." Perhaps the
most eloquent assessment of Professor Reynolds gift for teaching came from a
graduate student lecturer in his Department who said: "As a pedagogue, he
is without equal in instilling a sense of wonder in the classes he teaches,
both to the beginning music student and to the more sophisticated music majors,
as well as to graduate students."
Numerous students lauded Professor
Reynolds for his kindness and gentleness and for the genuine interest he took
both in their professional and personal development. Many students found that Reynolds' classes challenged their
expectations, forcing them to rethink preconceived notions. One student, who was first introduced to
Professor Reynolds in the context of a year-long music history course he was
"dreading," confessed: "I had no interest in history of any kind
because I hadn't decided to study music so I could study the past. However, by the end of the year Chris had
managed to teach me to enjoy the subject.
He made it come alive and seem more like a story than history class. He gave the people characters instead of
lists of accomplishments, he gave events social and musical contexts instead of
dates."
But Christopher Reynolds doesn't
just make traditional subjects, like the history of music, Renaissance music,
nineteenth-century music, and Beethoven—to name but some of his fields of
expertise—compelling for students interested in more contemporary music; he has
also been instrumental in expanding the UC Davis music curriculum to include
contemporary subject matter, by developing Music 121, a course on Film Music,
but especially Music 106, The History of Rock Music. According to his chair and nominator, Anna Maria Busse Berger,
some of Professor Reynolds' colleagues were initially skeptical about the Rock
course; they "felt that it would take students away from courses on
classical music and that the music wasn't worth discussing." Despite—or perhaps because of—the rather
daunting class assignments, Reynolds splits his 130 or so students into groups
of four or five students; "these students are required to write both the
text and the music of two songs. From
the class he forms three rock bands which then perform best songs in a final
concert"—the History of Rock Music turned out to be a tremendous
success. Indeed, it was such a success
that it silenced the skeptics.
According to Busse Berger: "we all now see the merit of his
conception. The course is one of our
most successful classes. In addition,
we have discovered that students regularly become music majors after having
taken the Rock Music Class."
Among the most impressive aspects of
Reynolds' stellar teaching record are uniformly high and positive remarks he
receives in a broad array of undergraduate and graduate courses and his success
in motivating students to go on to graduate school. A former undergraduate, now a grad student at Brandeis, had this
to say: "[Reynolds'] interest and love for the music was infectious . . .
[H]e had an amazing ability to captivate a room full of students mainly
concerned with their GPAs and their upcoming concert performances and interest
them in this new, 'weird' modern music of the twentieth century. More than any other professor I knew at
Davis, he was able to promote active, involved, and at times, impassioned
discussion among the students."
Another student, currently pursuing graduate work at Harvard, fondly
recalls Reynolds' rather iconoclastic teaching venues: "I will never
forget our class acting out a full length Rameau opera in the arboretum, and
through it, the nature of the Baroque era became more understandable." He goes on to recall even more unusual
practices: "We also sang renaissance madrigals in the men’s bathroom
because it was the closest thing available to church acoustics."
Given all we have heard about his
formidable breadth of knowledge and the passion Professor Reynolds brings to
his subject matter, his dedication to his students, and his iconoclastic
teaching techniques, the following student's assessment of Reynolds' influence
on her life and her future career is understandable: "When I become a
college professor, Dr. Reynolds will be the example I will aspire to live up
to. He was and is a wonderful
professor, mentor, and friend, and is a reason why I smile whenever I think of
UC Davis." We at Davis all have
reason to smile as well: we are fortunate to have such a gifted and devoted
teacher-mentor on our faculty.
Christopher Reynolds is a credit to his field, his department, the Davis
campus and the UC system.
Distinguished
Teaching Award
October,
2001
Peter
S. Rodman
A highly respected scholar of
biological and evolutionary anthropology, with a specialization in primate
behavior, Professor Peter S. Rodman has spent nearly thirty years teaching
thousands of UC Davis undergraduate and graduate students. Testimonials from his former graduate
students make clear his key role in training the next generation of stellar
scholars and teachers in this field.
Those graduate students from twenty-five years ago and the first-year
student in a Davis Honors Challenge section of Anthropology 1 taught by
Professor Rodman a few years ago—and everyone in between—draw a similar
portrait, that of a dedicated teacher who challenges and inspires students,
awakening in them interests, abilities, and critical thinking they hardly knew
they could muster until they were taught by Professor Rodman.
The student evaluations of his
teaching have high numbers, as we might expect, but it is the consistency of
comments and adjectives across the evaluations and across the dozens of letters
from undergraduate students, graduate students, colleagues, and alumni that
most impresses the reader. All praise
his remarkably well-organized courses.
Beginning with mimeographed and then photocopied course materials in his
early years of teaching, later he was among the first in the faculty to make
full use of web-based instruction and Powerpoint presentations for his
courses. He brings enormous expertise
to his courses, and he makes sure that every lecture, every class session, and
every other bit of supplementary class
material
reflects the most current knowledge in the field.
Professor Rodman puts as much
creativity and energy into teaching the General Education course to hundreds as
he does the graduate course to a dozen.
Anthropology 1 (Human Evolutionary Biology) and Anthropology 15 (Behavioral
and Evolutionary Biology in the Human Life Cycle) show up as often in his
teaching records as do the upper-division and graduate courses in evolution and
primate behavior. In all cases, he aims
to have his students learn how to think scientifically and how to cross
disciplinary boundaries in their learning.
Professor Rodman demands that students think critically and broadly
about the meanings and implications of their detailed studies. His exams are designed to teach as well as
to assess learning, and he cares enormously about good writing.
Also consistent across the testimony
about Professor Rodman is his great respect for and caring about his
students. That he won the Outstanding
Mentor Award from the Consortium for Women and Research in 1998 says a great
deal about his mentoring of graduate students, which includes the now-famous
"Simian Seminar" he created 29 years ago, an extracurricular,
biweekly gathering of faculty and students at his home to discuss current
research in evolutionary biology, anthropology, and primatology.
We can think of no better summary
testimony than this, from an alumna who is now herself a renowned evolutionary
anthropologist and professor at an Ivy League university: "I am now at a
university," she writes, "where undergraduate teaching is considered
a bore and a duty, something that one should try to avoid. But I know from Peter Rodman that this is
not true, that interacting with undergrads is the best kind of teaching there
is. In all my years of knowing Peter,
he has always talked in the most positive way about his students. And even after all these years as a teacher,
he continually works to improve his courses, his lectures, and his interactions
with students." We are extremely
pleased to bestow one of the 2001 Distinguished Teaching Awards from the Davis
Division of the Academic Senate on Professor Peter S. Rodman.