“Extraordinary!” “Dedicated!” “Knowledgeable!” “Passionate!” “Approachable!” “Simply wonderful!”

 

Rave reviews by Professor Caldwell’s students, accolades by colleagues in the School of Theater, Film and Television, letters of praise and gratitude from former students now in faculty and professional positions around the world — these and more filled a 135-page package nominating him for this year’s Academic Senate’s Distinguished Teachers Award. He is also being awarded the Distinction in Teaching at the Graduate Level.

 

Yet as satisfying as all these tributes to his teaching skills are, Caldwell said, the real honor in receiving the award goes right back to his students in the classroom.

 

“This sort of thing is collective to the core,” Caldwell said, “inextricably tied as it is to the group dynamic of the seminar, the classroom and the student communities that form within them."

 

On faculty at UCLA since 1999, Caldwell has earned a reputation for innovation not only in how he teaches but in what he teaches. Never one to settle for the status quo, he has developed dozens of new courses that, wrote Film, Television and Digital Media Department Chair Barbara Boyle, “meet the needs of students in an increasingly convergent and digital age … and move the curriculum into the 21st century.”

 

Caldwell’s course offerings encompass a sweeping range of subject areas, including film, TV, photography, cinematography, editing, directing, cultural studies, media history and more. His most recent offerings are cutting-edge courses about media and the complexities of contemporary technologies and media cultures. “His teaching and courses are among the most relevant and current in the department,” Boyle noted.

 

An award-winning filmmaker whose work has been screened internationally and the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, Caldwell is also prolifically published: His critical and theoretical writings have appeared in dozens of journals and books — in direct opposition, Caldwell noted, to having grown up “in a rural environment where the worst thing folks could say about something was ‘That's academic.’” His objective, Caldwell said, is “to turn this assumption on its ear, to force rarefied theoretical concepts to the ground.” Media aesthetics, he said, are not remote or abstract but “are woven into our everyday lives, sometimes in astonishing ways.”

 

He credits his students for much of the direction of his work. “My best research was triggered by my experience in the classroom,” he said of the brainstorming, debating environment he encourages. “That's where things get framed and reframed in an endless, challenging cycle — collectively."

 

To new teachers, he offers this advice: “Keep your ear to the ground. Don't just listen for changes in the field. Listen for the unorthodox questions that undergraduates and graduates inevitably bring to the table. The latter questions will inevitably push you to rethink the former — hopefully in innovative ways."

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