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Photos by Reed Hutchinson
UCLA Photographic Services
Elma González, the first faculty member to receive
a teaching award for mentorship, works with Sanam Saaber,
who hopes to go to medical school.
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UCLA's BEST TeacHERS
And the winners are...
Someone once said that teaching at UCLA is its own reward. True
or not, recognition from one’s professional peers is certainly
nice, as is a tidy honorarium.
Each year, the Academic Senate selects six recipients of the Distinguished
Teaching Award from among its members. In addition to representing
the highest attainment of academic and professional excellence,
the award carries a $6,000 cash prize.
The 2004-05 honorees include a classroom rapper, a yo-yo spinner,
a banjo player and a one-time farm laborer. The latter, Elma González,
is the first to receive an award initiated this year to honor a
faculty member for superb mentorship to undergraduates engaged in
research or creative scholarly projects.
Members of the Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching, which
includes faculty members, an alumnus and students, selected winners
among 14 nominees. The winners will be honored May 15 at the UCLA
Alumni Association’s annual awards ceremony at Covel Commons.
This fall, they will be feted at the Andrea L. Rich Night to Honor
Teaching, an event sponsored annually by the Committee on Teaching
and the Office of Instructional Development. Winning non-Senate
faculty and teaching assistants will also be honored.
 The
Music Man
Roger Bourland starts every one of his classes with what he calls
a “one-minute commercial” — an exhortation to
his students about such matters as tolerating other religions and
respecting people from different cultures. His students love to
hear the mini sermons, which Bourland invariably follows by offering
valuable advice on how to break into the music business.
Those are just two of the qualities that make Bourland a distinguished
teacher. A professor of music, he is noted for his knack for making
obscure subjects interesting. In music theory, for example, he has
been splendidly successful in introducing students to the often
abstruse inner workings of the world of music going back through
the centuries.
“I get inside each period (of music) and try to get students
excited about what the aesthetic of that age was, which is very
difficult to do,” he said. “If you grow up as an MTV
child, it is very hard for you to strip all that away and put yourself
in the shoes of Beethoven or Mozart.” In contrast, while teaching
music composition, Bourland encourages each student to develop a
sense of individuality, or “spark,” he explained, “which
keeps him or her from sounding the same, like widgets.”
— Ajay Singh
 The
Yo-Yo Man
How do you get non-science majors interested in the sciences? Bring
in cheap props.
That method has worked beautifully for Robert Fovell, associate
professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. To explain centrifugal/centripetal
force to a large class of undergraduates, for example, Fovell spins
a yo-yo. His students are riveted. “I think they’re
waiting to see if I hit myself in the head,” he joked.
Honored with the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching, Fovell teaches
all levels — from incoming freshmen to graduate students —
and earns raves from all corners. “As a student of social
sciences, I was not looking forward to studying about weather for
a quarter, but this class ended up being one of the best I have
taken,” wrote one undergraduate.
Fovell’s office-hours policy is “whenever my door is
open” and students take full advantage of his generosity,
lining up in the hallway for one-on-one time. As the department’s
undergraduate adviser, Fovell accommodates them all. “We’re
a research-oriented department, but we haven’t lost sight
of teaching,” said the meteorologist, whose own research focuses
on simulating thunderstorms. “I’ve been at places where,
quite frankly, teaching is not considered to be very important at
all. It’s nice that this department is much more concerned
about those things.”
— Wendy Soderburg
The Exemplar
Good mentors are often defined more by what they give than by who
they are. But occasionally, effective mentoring flows from a teacher’s
credentials, both personal and professional, as is the case with
Elma González, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology,
who is the inaugural winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award
for mentoring undergraduates in research.
An ethnic Mexican who picked crops as a child, González
overcame almost Promethean odds to go to college, eventually earning
a Ph.D. and dedicating her life to research and teaching. For almost
10 years, she has been the director of UCLA’s Minority Access
to Research Careers program, a federal plan that provides financial
support to 12 UCLA undergraduates annually, helping them prepare
for graduate and doctoral studies.
Having successfully undertaken such a journey herself, González
has a remarkable ability to advise students about the benefits of
higher education. “Her passion for the longest time has been
involving underrepresented students with the concept of graduate
study,” said Judith L. Smith, vice provost for undergraduate
education. “Many of these students don’t have family
members who have gone on to graduate studies, and she is very effective
at building with them a culture of both understanding and expectation.”
—A. S.
 The
Empathizer
Since Elizabeth Marchant joined the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
in 1998, it’s no coincidence that enrollment in several courses
has mushroomed. An associate professor, Marchant has done much to
boost interest in Latin American studies on campus.
“I try in a small way to make them feel that I care whether
they learn or not. That may sound simplistic,” she said, “but
in a large university like UCLA a lot of students feel anonymous,
and they appreciate it when someone cares about their learning.”
Marchant worked with graduate students two years ago to develop
a highly popular, interactive Web site for Portuguese language instruction.
The site offers up-to-date supplemental material on Portuguese grammar
and culture, and provides a wealth of information on areas not generally
covered in the language texts, such as Portuguese-speaking Africa.
Because Marchant’s colleague, Jesus Torrecilla, won the 2004
Distinguished Teaching Award, she didn’t think another teacher
from the same department would be chosen for the same award this
year. That the honor has been bestowed on her nevertheless is a
tribute to her compassion and outstanding teaching skills.
— A. S.
 The
Teacher's Teacher
When people ask Mike Rose whether he still enjoys teaching after
37 years, he doesn’t hesitate to answer. “I love this
work as much now as I did when I was 24,” said the education
professor.
Rose has taught illiterate adults, Vietnam veterans, under-prepared
college students and the brightest graduate students. All have benefited
from the vitality and careful thought he brings to the planning,
development and teaching of courses and curricula.
“His unflagging energy to help individuals and build programs
has put him at the center of key UCLA curricular innovations,”
said Diane Durkin, a faculty member and chair of the committee that
nominated him for the Distinguished Teaching Award.
The Academic Advancement Program, the Freshman Summer Program,
the UCLA Writing Programs and a summer program that UCLA runs for
children of migrant workers all bear his imprint, as do a wide range
of graduate courses.
His latest teaching prize honors his outstanding work with students
at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. While
Rose has sent thousands of students into the world to build careers
of their own, they never leave his life for good. On prominent display
in his office is a faded photo of his first batch of students, a
kindergarten class from El Monte.
— Cynthia Lee
 The
Rapper
Why not leave them laughing?
It works for Professor Keith Stolzenbach, coordinator of the Global
Environment GE Cluster course and winner of a Distinguished Teaching
Award. On the last day of class, the lights dim in Dodd 121 and
a techno beat thumps over the sound system. Then comes … the
rap.
Standing side by side on stage, Stolzenbach and his generally buttoned-up
co-instructors recite a rhyming rap that touches on global warming,
sustainable development and the final-exam review from 6 p.m. to
8 p.m. It’s feeble and ridiculous, and the students love it,
responding with hoots, hollers and whistles.
A dedicated environmentalist, Stolzenbach was instrumental in the
creation of the Global Environment cluster course. His rather eclectic
teaching style makes use of multimedia presentations, debates, skits,
newsletters and field trips, to which he often devotes a Saturday
afternoon.
Students award Stolzenbach consistently high marks. One of the
things they like is his use of a contract that spells out what is
expected of them and when. Once students are clear about expectations,
they feel freer to explore new ideas and concepts, Stolzenbach said.
To keep himself from getting bored, Stolzenbach from time to time
teaches something he has never taught before. Right now, he is preparing
to teach an upper-division statistics course. “I awaken in
the middle of the night to worry about it,” he concedes, “but
I like to take on new challenges.”
— Anne Burke
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