August 19, 1999
Today is the first day of classes at KU.
Hemenway, Provost David Shulenburger, KU Endowment Association President Jim Martin and Mark Gonzales, community president of Commerce Bank, Lawrence, dropped in to recognize high-quality teaching and advising of graduate and undergraduate students.
The "surprise patrol" will make visits to eight more Lawrence and Edwards campus faculty members on Friday, Aug. 20, and Monday, Aug. 23. Four KU Medical Center faculty members in Wichita and Kansas City, Kan., will be honored Aug. 24, 25 and 31. In all, 20 professors will be honored and $100,000 distributed.
The W.T. Kemper Fellowships for Teaching Excellence recognize outstanding teachers and advisers at KU as determined by a seven-member selection committee. The committee's members include students, faculty and KU alumni. This is the fourth year in the five-year award program.
The William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank, Trustee, established a $250,000 fund for the program. The KU Endowment Association provided $250,000 in matching funds.
"KU has a great faculty," Hemenway said. "It is a privilege to be able to reward teaching and advising in such a meaningful way."
James Kemper, chair of the Kemper Foundation Contribution Committee, said he and Commerce Bank were pleased to assist KU in recruiting and retaining talented teachers for the benefit of KU students. The William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank, Trustee, was established in 1989 after Kemper's death. The foundation is dedicated to continuing Kemper's lifelong interest in improving the human condition and quality of life. The foundation supports Midwest communities and concentrates on initiatives in education, health and human services, civic improvements and the arts.
KEMPER AWARD WINNERS FOR THURSDAY, AUG. 19
ARLENE L. BARRY
Arlene Barry joined the School of Education in 1992, having previously taught in the Madison, Wisconsin public schools. An associate professor in teaching & leadership, her academic speciality encompasses all aspects of reading. A colleague notes that Barry has attained a national reputation for her work in the history of literacy and is looked to by other scholars in this field for her intellectual contributions. She teaches a class, Reading in the Content Areas, that is required for teaching licensure in the state. Thus, her impact on education throughout Kansas through her students and the students they teach in turn is truly significant.
DIANA B. CARLIN
Diana Carlin, professor of communication studies, is described by a colleague as a prototype of the public teacher-scholar. Her disciplinary areas of interest include political and social influence and organizational communication, and she is an acknowledged authority in the field of political debates. Carlin has served on the Advisory Board Commission on Presidential Debates and has chaired the board of directors of the Kids Voting project in Kansas. Her work with the DebateWatch '96 project afforded both graduate and undergraduate students in her classes a unique learning experience.
STEPHEN R. MCALLISTER
Law professor Stephen McAllister received his undergraduate and J.D. degrees from the University of Kansas, and returned in 1993 as a member of the law school faculty. In the interim away from Lawrence, he clerked for a chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, two Supreme Court justices, and worked in a Washington, D.C. private firm. While maintaining a full plate in the Law School, McAllister does not restrict his teaching to Green Hall. He regularly offers a freshman honors tutorial on the Supreme Court and is a faculty adviser to the prestigious University Scholars Program. He was a University Scholar as an undergraduate.
VICTOR BAILEY
Before coming to KU in 1988, Victor Bailey, professor of history, held academic posts at Oxford and Hull Universities in Britain and the University of Rochester in New York. His emergence as a leading figure in the field of socio-legal history of Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries was further demonstrated recently by the publication of his latest book, " 'This Rash Act': Suicide Across the Life-Cycle in the Victorian City." In recalling his class with Bailey, a student writes, "These energized conversations, both oral and written, about the meaning(s) of the past epitomize the best methods of graduate history teaching, as KU seeks to practice them."
DAVID S. HOLMES
Within the psychology department, David Holmes carries a very heavy teaching load - indeed, during some semesters, he accounts for almost 25 percent of the undergraduate credit hours of this large unit. He is a master of the large lecture format; at minimum, 1300 students a year take his psychology courses. In describing Holmes' teaching, a colleague wrote: "First, he is able to motivate students to do their absolute best, and ... second [he] combines his 'no-nonsense' approach with a willingness to bend over backwards to help his students."
JAN KOZMA
Professor Jan Kozma is the only full-time Italianist at KU, and thus has taught language and literature from elementary to advanced levels, literary surveys, seminars, directed readings and courses in Italian civilization. She devised the Summer Language Institute in Florence, Italy, an intensive language experience intended to help students achieve the fluency needed to study Italian literature as a major. Her goal in teaching any course is to bring students to a level where they can "do without her" - whether to communicate with self-assurance or to handle a text and make critical judgments.
PHILIP A. SCHRODT
Philip Schrodt, professor of political science, specializes in foreign policy decision-making, international conflict and crises forecasting, and quantitative international relations. Schrodt is credited by his colleagues with (largely) solving graduate student resistance to the mathematical modeling and statistical methods that increasingly dominate the best work in political science. Some of his graduate student converts become teaching assistants in lower-level methods courses, so Schrodt's effectiveness trickles down to improve the undergraduate major.
NORMAN A. SLADE
Norman Slade is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of mammals at the Natural History Museum. Within the department, he teaches courses in the area of biostatistics to both graduate and undergraduate students. In recent years, Slade has added computers to his courses as a means of adding hands-on exercises in demonstrating the principles he is articulating. A world-class ecologist, Slade often takes students to field sites so they can observe firsthand the ecological principles presented in his courses. In explaining his teaching philosophy, Slade said that a good teacher guides students at the start and then avoids hindering their progress.
Contact: Todd Cohen, University Relations, (785) 864-8858 or e-mail tcohen@ukans.edu