BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff

Joseph DiStefano III	Robin Garrell	A.P. Gonzalez	Mitchell Morris	Kirk Stark

Even though it’s only Day One of Chem 14B, 300 freshmen are already fidgeting in their seats. The bizarre scene they see at the front of the classroom doesn’t allay their nervousness about taking “Thermodynamics, Kinetics, Organic Structures and Spectroscopy.”

Two teaching assistants stand on either side of a lectern bench holding tall poles topped with lighted candles. Tethered to the bench are a dozen balloons floating eight feet in the air.
Suddenly the lights go out; an expectant hush fills the dark lecture hall. Then as “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones blares over the sound system, the TAs begin dancing across the room while the balloons explode to the pounding beat.

“Welcome to Chem 14B! These are examples of the chemical reactions you’ll come to understand in this course,” announces Associate Professor Robin Garrell as she runs up and down the aisles, shaking hands, learning names and dispelling the “fear factor” that grips first-year undergrads. They laugh away their jitters. Let the learning begin.

This fusion of high energy and personal style helped make Garrell of chemistry and biochemistry one of the five winners of this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards, to be presented to them by the UCLA Alumni Association.

These winners with different, but equally dynamic, teaching styles have garnered effusive praise from students, deans, department chairs and colleagues: Joseph DiStefano III, computer science, medicine and cybernetics; A.P. Gonzalez, film, television and digital media; Mitchell Morris, musicology; and Kirk Stark, School of Law.

The ability to connect with students, no matter how complex or “dry” the subject matter, is what these teachers have in common, along with a complete mastery of their material to keep students challenged.

Garrell’s method of displacing fear with excitement “is not just a dramatic gimmick,” explained chair William Gelbart in his nomination letter, “but rather the beginning of a many-month (and sometimes many-year) growing relationship between her and the students.” She’s also been able to introduce more new courses and training programs than anyone else in the department’s history.

DiStefano also leads students into intellectually deep waters. He is the life force behind the Cybernetics Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Program, described by Dean of Life Sciences Fred Eiserling as “the most rigorous intellectual degree program in the life sciences. Yet somehow the students not only succeed, they excel under Joe’s guidance.”

“I am passionate about teaching in this research university, teaching frontier as well as basic material, to bright undergrads as well as grads,” said DiStefano, who relishes the time he spends with students in his biocybernetics lab.

Gonzalez, exceptional for his ability to effectively teach a broad range of courses in the film, television and digital media department, shows graduate students how to look inside themselves for compelling stories in his screenwriting class. In lectures, screenings and countless individual meetings with students, he helps them tap their creativity.

“What better gift can a teacher give to students than the ability to reach their full potential,” said William McDonald, the department’s longest-serving academic leader.

Called a brilliant pedagogue and cherished mentor, Mitchell Morris has advised more graduate students, worked on more committees and spent more hours conferring with students than any junior faculty member could reasonably expect to do, a fellow teacher noted.

“My colleague is one of the most dynamic, even spellbinding, lecturers I have ever seen,” Assistant Professor Robert Fink said. “His student evaluations, consistently among the highest in our generally high-scoring department, bear this out.”

A teacher who last year won the highest instructor rating of any ladder faculty member in the law school, Kirk Stark attracts large crowds to his classes, even though tax, a technically complex subject, is not required and is not tested on the California Bar exam.

With his ability to weave in humor and lead lively, meaningful discussions, “tax has become a must-take class,” said third-year law student Mari Metcalf. “My experience as a student in Professor Stark’s tax class has been one of the most important educational experiences in my life.”

These outstanding teachers will be honored by the Alumni Association at its 58th UCLA Awards ceremony May 17 at the UCLA Hammer Museum.

Later in the fall, the Office of Instructional Development and the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching will salute all 13 Distinguished Teaching Award winners, faculty and teaching assistants at “A Night to Honor Teaching.”