There is no truth to the rumor that Oprah Winfrey learned how to work an audience by watching Enrique “Rick” Bonus preside in 210 Kane.

But Bonus does roam the room with a cordless microphone, just one of the audience-participation techniques that has led to a doubling of enrollment in Introduction to the Cultures of American Ethnic Groups since he took over the course.

Bonus, an associate professor of American Ethnic Studies and winner of a 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award, will do just about anything to make his classes — even big survey courses — engaging.

“I put myself in the students’ shoes,” Bonus said. “What would make me sit here with this guy for two hours?”

Calling himself “a very structured lecturer,” Bonus starts each session by laying out for the students what he calls a road map, then he serves up the major themes in 15-minute chunks.

He draws participation, he said, by leaving the podium to roam the aisles, as well as by inventing exercises such as assigning each student to be the teacher for one minute.
But the bag of teaching tricks, one suspects, is less central to Bonus’ success than his sheer passion for the classroom and his material

“I see teaching,” he said with a relaxed grin, “as a very pleasurable experience.”

The pleasure is mutual, say his students.

“Many students aspire to become like Rick Bonus,” said Caroline Tamayo, a doctoral student in multicultural education and superintendent leadership.

Bonus is one of the breed of professors who constantly connects book-learning with real-life experience, said one of his teaching assistants, Chong-suk Han, a doctoral candidate in social work.

When Stephen Sumida, the American Ethnic Studies department chairman, sat in a Bonus lecture, the way he described the atmosphere was: “exceptionally inviting.”

“I, too, felt like participating in the discussion,” said Sumida, who also has lauded Bonsus’ scholarly work as “breaking the mold,” especially Bonus’ 2000 book, Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space.

High praise for an academic career that, Bonus says, almost fizzled before it began.

Drifting through the graduate communications program at the University of California at San Diego, Bonus one day grabbed the only teaching-assistant stipend that was available: a course in ethnic studies.

It was a revelation. In its exploration of power, language and culture in America, ethnic studies was a subject that finally made sense to Bonus, who grew up in a Filipino family in both the United States and Manila.

“The first day of that class, my mouth was literally wide open,” he said. “It was a spiritual experience.”

Now, when he teaches comparative ethnic studies, Filipino American history and Asian American immigration, Bonus seems to have the same effect on a new generation.

American Ethnic Studies colleague Gail Nomura says Bonus is an excellent model for his students in showing them how to test theories and conduct research — in short, to be a scholar. He is especially good at raising issues of academic ethics in the conduct of fieldwork in ethnic communities.

“Professor Bonus,” Nomura wrote in her nominating letter for the 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award, “is a model for what it means to be a teacher.”

– Steven Goldsmith

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One can’t accuse Lisa Coutu of taking the easy way out.

The Department of Communication senior lecturer is the winner of a 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award, in part because of her willingness to challenge herself and her students.

She literally will try almost anything to help her students understand a concept and, perhaps more importantly, she has high expectations for herself and her students.

“I just don’t feel like it’s worth my time or theirs to spend four or five hours a week together and not get something done,” Coutu said. “So I have relatively high standards for how much work students will do and the quality of the work they will produce.”

That challenging approach has inspired her students. In nominating her for the award they spoke of being pushed to reach their peak.

“As students we were challenged, expected to ground our observations in the text and class readings, and provoked to respond to, not observe, class discussions,” one student wrote. Another student, who admitted to being “difficult” at times, also benefited from Coutu’s classroom. “She gave me a chance, and brought the best out of me. In doing so, I believe that she affected the direction of my life more than any other professor in my education.”

More impressive still, Coutu has shown the ability to get through to students in even the most difficult situations. Many of Coutu’s classes include more than 200 students, one had 450 students. That, she says, poses a rare challenge. She tries to shrink the class interpersonally while expanding it educationally.

For example, she tries to know each and every one of the students in the large lecture halls, at least by face. When she sees them on campus she’ll say hello, to prove to herself that she can do it and to prove to her students that they’re important to her. And if students see her around she encourages them to do the same. It’s an extension of a classroom approach that tries to involve and engage every student.

When the interpersonal approach doesn’t work, she will stretch her comfort zone to help students learn. She’s a former technophobe, but her colleagues say that Coutu has made good use of the Catalyst teaching resources available from the UW Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology.

In fact, Gerald Baldasty, chair of the Department of Communication, has been so impressed that he invited Coutu to deliver a presentation about technology and teaching during last year’s Institute for Teaching Excellence.

“She did a superb job in her presentation at ITE, turning that workshop into a highly interactive, and highly rated by the faculty attendees, session,” he said.

Coutu earned her Ph.D. in 1996 from the UW and says she remains happy and at home on this campus. She continues to do research and to publish, but her primary focus remains squarely on the classroom.

“I guess I just really get a kick out of being with the students. I feel like I have the opportunity in really small ways to make an impact on people’s lives.”

– Steve Hill

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In a relatively short span of time Susan Kemp certainly has put her own brand on the UW’s School of Social Work.

In less than a decade on campus she has earned a reputation as an assistant and associate professor for being a demanding but warm teacher who inspires her students to grow and stretch their intellectual boundaries. She also has led the school’s efforts to transform its master of social work curriculum as associate dean for professional degree programs. And now she has been named the recipient of one of a 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award.

“She creates in every classroom a warmth and vibrancy that compels exchange, reflection and intellectual growth,” wrote Dorothy Van Soest, dean of the school in support of Kemp’s nomination.

“Her knowledge of the field of social work and its many sister disciplines — including, to name a few, psychology, sociology, women studies and social geography — is both profound and encyclopedic. Her capacity to articulate theoretical materials and apply them, precisely and cogently, to complex social- work practice issues is astonishing.

Her profound love of learning and discovery is infectious.

“Dr. Kemp has developed several new courses for the school. In all cases, the outcome has been the offering of the most extraordinary, innovative and highly rated courses our school has ever offered to students. The brilliance and creativity that she brings to both the development and delivery of courses far exceeds anything I have witnessed before in my 25 years of experience in higher education … She is by far most remarkable teacher and colleague I have ever had the privilege of working with.”

As a teacher Kemp is demanding but generous with her students, something she experienced herself as a student.

“I was lucky in a number of important places in my life,” she said. “As an undergraduate and on my master’s in New Zealand I had teachers who expected me to be an independent thinker. Then at Columbia (where she earned her doctorate) I had an incredible advisory committee. All of these people were brilliant and pushed you. But they also were generous with their time and ideas. I’ve tried to be as generous with my students.

“I want them to be able to think critically about what they are doing and to be able to think out of the box because the issues we deal with demand that. I want them to read, think and push themselves. Sometimes students don’t quite realize they can push themselves to another level. It is all about both of us going to another level so we all stretch. I want my students to be leaders in the field sooner not later so they can make a difference in social justice.”

Kemp seems to have a special ability to connect with foreign and minority students. Some of that may stem from her background in New Zealand.

“I have a commitment to international students and the outsider status I have certainly helps,” she said. “But it’s also in my heart. My husband is from a New Zealand minority, being a Maori, so I know what students of color have to grapple with when they come to the university.

“Americans have grown up with the legacy of slavery. I come to students with a different background than my American colleagues. Plus I spent a lot of time in New York and Bridgeport, Conn., which are both very diverse, so I’m comfortable with a lot of diversity. I just enjoy everybody and I learn from my students every day. What better life can you have?”

“I’m invested in teaching well and have put a lot of time in trying to achieve that. This works as well in relationships I’ve built with students,” she said. “We talk about respect, diversity and social justice every day and we have to do those things well in the classroom.”

– Joel Schwarz

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Jim Morrow loves a good challenge. Whether the mathematics professor finds it through the process of solving complex equations or by completing sub-three hour marathons, he says it’s the process of discovery and accomplishment that keeps him interested in motivating his students to share his passion for learning.

“Running great distances is like cracking the code to a difficult math problem — just because it’s tough doesn’t mean one doesn’t do it,” Morrow says. “Both endeavors require persistence and tenacity and the burning desire to achieve a solution despite the temporary obstacles and pitfalls that life gives us.”

Morrow’s teaching philosophy is similar to his attitude about life. He says his aim is to show students how to approach solving problems while enjoying the process, which nearly always involves making mistakes and encountering failures. By encouraging students to tackle problems from multiple angles, he helps them develop brand-new ways of thinking that improve their analytical skills. And students say that although he challenges them with tough problems, he also provides motivation and support throughout the process of discovering solutions.

Jeff Giansiracusa, an undergraduate student, believes Morrow is the primary reason he decided to become a math major. “Professor Morrow’s influence extends far outside the classroom,” says Giansiracusa. “He maintains strong relationships with many of his students and guides us through independent projects, group endeavors, and provides personal advice.”

“Everything he does is centered on getting students to appreciate mathematics, to learn to discover and create,” says Selim Tuncel, acting mathematics chair. “He teaches them to become comfortable with solving problems, to accept the difficulties while enjoying the thrills of the creative process. His work is enabled by extensive knowledge of the subject, his keeping up with the latest developments, and his deep understanding of the needs of students.”

A UW professor since 1969, Morrow’s non-classroom contributions to his department are just as comprehensive as his honors calculus lectures.

In 1991, during his first term as mathematics undergraduate program director, he founded the Math Study Center. The center, where students can work on problems independently and collaboratively with their peers, has been such a success that other departments and universities have formed similar centers.

Morrow has also overseen Math Day for the past 10 years and directed the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program since 1988. Each spring Math Day brings 1,200 high school students from throughout the state to campus to hear UW faculty discuss math’s role in the sciences. Morrow says a number of high school students he met many years ago at the event became UW students whom he helped mentor as they earned their degrees in mathematics.

Under Morrow’s direction since 1988, REU is a two-month summer program sponsored by the National Science Foundation that allows about 10 undergraduates from around the country to work together on new research for unsolved math problems. Past participants say they would not have considered attending graduate school or pursuing careers in math and allied disciplines had they not been involved in REU.

Yet another one of Morrow’s extracurricular activities has been serving as adviser to UW math department teams that have entered the Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The four-day event is unique among modeling competitions because it is the only contest in the world in which students work in teams to find solutions to real-world problems. This year, both teams Morrow coached took top honors in the prestigious international competition.

Tom Duchamp, a mathematics professor, says, “The enormous amount of time he devotes to his students is one of the many measures of Morrow’s commitment to math education. His dedication, his carefully planned lectures, his warmth, his enthusiasm for teaching and for mathematics, and the profound effect he has had on almost every student are what make him a perfect candidate for the Distinguished Teaching Award.”

– Nancy Gardner

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On an afternoon earlier this month, Richard Johnson sat in his office, deeply engaged in a book on the practice of tarring and feathering.

“The recipe is here,” he said, pointing out illustrations in the book. “Consistency of the tar, don’t let it get too cold, that sort of thing.”

Asked if the research related to course content or to a troublesome pupil, the professor of early American history laughed. “Actually, it came up in class. A student asked where the practice originated and I didn’t know, so I’ve been making some inquiries.”

For the record, tarring and feathering appears to have been concocted by the American colonists, he said. “They seem to have invented it as a ritual of shaming to turn people into walking chickens.”

It’s this sort of responsiveness, say Johnson’s students and colleagues, coupled with an enthusiastic curiosity and a driving desire to take class members into the past so they can better understand the present, that has earned the British-born professor a 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award.

“Simply put, his devotion to teaching and to students, his constant effort to improve his own work in the classroom, and his utter selflessness as a colleague provide a wondrous example,” said John Findlay, history department chairman.

Early American history is an easy subject to be enthusiastic about, Johnson said — it has just about everything. There’s new social history. It has beginning and culminating events of people creating new societies. There’s revolution, racial relations and different labor systems.

“It’s a relatively short period, but Americans have made the most of it,” he said. And there’s ample room for students to make new discoveries about their past.
Here are some additional history facts:

• The tune for The Star Spangled Banner was taken from an English drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven. “So you can blame the difficulty in singing that one on the British, with those final high notes and all,” Johnson said.
• Soldiers for the Revolutionary Army were often recruited with offers of slaves as a bounty. In essence, they were fighting for liberty in exchange for human bondage.

“ We might look at that today and say ‘How horribly hypocritical,’” Johnson said. But that misses the mark in fostering a historical perspective that helps answer the whysof how things came to be as they are today.

“One needs to understand the thoughts and conventions of the time, and the understanding of what constituted a just society,” Johnson said. “That brings out the way in which people at that time saw their revolutionary commitment, in rather different terms than what we would.”

To help bring students into the early American world, Johnson has them study original source material — pamphlets, advertisements, newspaper articles. The sources students read are tied to certain events that have conflict, division and argument built into them — the trial of Anne Hutchinson, the Stamp Act crisis, the debate over the Constitution or the Salem village witch trials. Then, the students write about their explorations. That prepares them to more meaningfully engage in class discussions.

“Writing, like hanging, concentrates a person’s mind wonderfully,” Johnson quipped.

For his part, Johnson said, he tries to make the material he presents engaging by using anecdotes, examples and humor. The act of teaching itself, over the years, has provided illustrations as well.

“I think of the person who wandered into my ‘Great Awakening’ class on the religious revival of 1740,” he recalled. “She walked across the back of the stage shouting ‘Jesus is coming to campus on Wednesday!’ It was the perfect moment for me to use her as an illustration of the itinerant evangelist.”

Johnson said that’s how he views himself as a teacher — not especially inspired, but one who has worked hard to develop his abilities, gain experience and take advantage of the things that come his way.

“The TAs thought I had hired that woman to come in,” he said, adding that he still uses the incident as an example to help students connect past and present. “In reality, it was quite, as the Puritans would say, providential.”

– Rob Harrill

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“Caring is the metaphor and ethic that guides my philosophy of teaching,” says Suzanne Sikma, assistant professor of nursing at UW Bothell and the winner of a 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award. “I strive to both facilitate an optimal climate and environment for learning, and apply the ‘therapeutics’ of caring in the teaching-learning process.”

Sikma adds that she demonstrates confidence in the nursing students’ ability to accomplish the course objectives. “We discuss strategies for acknowledging the pain and threats of working with vulnerable populations, such as the dying or abused clients and their families,” she says.

Sikma believes that valuing the learner is the caring therapeutic that is the foundation of effective teaching. To this end, she makes the effort to know her students as individuals, trying to understand the different needs, styles, commitments, boundaries and interests they bring to the educational experience.

“I design learning experiences that encourage questions and try to model reciprocal relationships with students, other faculty and staff,” says Sikma, who has been at UW Bothell since 1997. “It is critical to connect students with and optimize their use of diverse learning resources both at UWB and in the community.”

This desire to value, respect and challenge her students, to understand their diverse backgrounds, perspectives and opinions in the classroom, creates a connection that provides a rich educational environment.

“She has the ability to help her students learn the application of theory for use in our lives and work situations,” says Debbie Pronk, a current UW Bothell nursing student. “This is done by having each of us participate in class in ways that push the envelope of challenge and discovery. We then have new insights and tools which can be applied in our health-care settings and in our community.”

Diversity and multicultural awareness are critical to nurses working in today’s diverse health-care and community environments. Sikma addresses this critical component by incorporating leadership and group work, utilizing multicultural cases and examples. By doing this, Sikma feels that “students learn how to make the best use of their own diverse expertise, cultural backgrounds, interests and styles.”

“Suzanne is an exceptional teacher,” says Anne Loustau, professor emeritus and former director of the UWB Nursing program. “She comes to academic teaching with a strong background in staff development education and clearly understands the importance of an adult education model in instruction. She is going to be living proof of the importance of the scholarship of discovery and the contributions to be made by a nurse engaged at this level.”

Sikma’s current research, revolving around gerontological nursing, caring, and self-determination, provides a rich backdrop to her teaching. She has been co-principal investigator of two statewide health policy implementation evaluations regarding nurse delegation in community-based care and self-directed care by people with disabilities.

For this work, Sikma was honored as one of 11 scholars in the 2002 Geriatric Research Scholars and Fellows Program, sponsored by The John A. Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, part of the New York University Division of Nursing. The program fosters gerontological nursing researchers with the goal of improving the quality of health care for older adults. Sikma was selected for having conducted significant research in gerontologic nursing and for her strong leadership potential.

Sikma’s dedication to teaching, coupled with her passion for community practice and focus on caring interventions to support autonomy, competence and relationships with the elderly, enables her to create that rare classroom setting that invites the exchange of ideas and observations. In this environment, both student and teacher value and benefit from one another.

“Valuing learners includes working sensitively with students who need assistance and encouragement due to language skills, preparation, or other differences,” says Sikma.

“Valuing students also means allowing them to see my humanity as a teacher, as evidenced by humor, caring, concern, and a recognition that we all continue to learn together from each other in the educational process.”

– Cynthia Scanlon

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Ruth Rea, UW Tacoma’s 2003 Distinguished Teaching Award recipient, is known throughout the Nursing Program for her innovative, joyful approach to teaching.

In her classroom, it’s no surprise to find students counting M&M’s and examining chocolate chip cookies during a statistics lesson. They might read poems in the Dead Numbers Society, work in “Survivor” groups or attend SPSS “boot camp.” Rea says it’s a teaching style that grabs students’ attention and forces them into an active role.

“Students do push themselves to learn,” she said. “But sometimes, you have to use a bit of entertainment to get their attention and maintain it.”

Students who nominated Rea for the award agree that her courses are entertaining and thorough.

“When I met Dr. Rea, I met someone who not only interacted with me, but fed my appetite for knowledge while keeping me hungry for more,” one student raved in a letter of nomination. “Dr. Rea can take any subject and make it fun, interesting and exciting.”

Rea said she was “amazingly humbled and pleased” to receive the award.

“ I work really hard on my teaching,” she said. “And to see students evolve and develop those higher thinking skills, to hear students share their dreams — that’s amazing.”

Rea holds a Ph.D. in nursing administration from the University of Texas, a master’s of science in nursing from the University of Colorado, and a bachelor’s of science in nursing from the University of Maryland.

She joined the Army as a way to pay for college, intending to study for four years and give the next three to her country. Somehow, she ended up staying.

“I thought about leaving,” she said. “But it just happened.”

Rea spent several years at the University of Michigan and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the University of Maryland. Some of her first patients were soldiers wounded in Vietnam.

“The recent attacks (during Operation Iraqi Freedom) raise images of those patients for me,” she said. “My nursing career has always focused on taking care of soldiers, so I have a good idea of what it means to ride in a convoy, what shelling looks like, what their wounds look like. It’s a very real feeling.”

By the end of her career, Rea was a full colonel and director of the Madigan Army Medical Center Education Unit, responsible for all staff education as well as the LPN program and other courses.

She retired from the Army in 1995 at 45 and quickly realized that she was too young to be idle.

“I think I failed retirement,” she said. “I had a need to be creative and productive.”
She put her minor in education to work and become a lecturer for St. Martin’s College before joining the UW Tacoma faculty in 1998.

“Nurses are natural educators,” she said. “It’s hard to be a nurse without being an educator. When I was an emergency nurse, I was teaching people all the time.”
Rea has lived in Tacoma for 13 years and said she’s happy to teach at UW’s Tacoma campus.

“This place is really special,” she said. “I always thought it would transform Tacoma and the community would realize an increase in its education level.”

– Jill Carnell

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