University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere grinned as he led three UO professors down the hallway to a conference room near the president’s Johnson Hall office.
“I lied,” he said, turning to the three as they entered a room filled with well-wishers.
He had promised the three a 45-minute, private briefing on his “New Partnership” plan for UO governance and funding. He instead surprised them with presentations of the 2010 Thomas F. Herman Faculty Achievement Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Lariviere congratulated Ken Calhoon, Richard Taylor and Mark Unno, and presented them with crystal apples to mark the annual awards.
The apples are given to faculty members who have demonstrated long-standing excellence in teaching at the university. Nominations are made by faculty colleagues and students.
Calhoon, professor of German and comparative literature, has been mentoring UO students from freshman year to doctoral dissertations for the past 23 years. He currently serves as the undergraduate director for the comparative literature program and also regularly teaches in the humanities program. He is a described as a creative, devoted and effective teacher inside and outside the classroom. Known to recite lengthy passages of text from memory, he combines “devotion to long traditions with an intense concern for contemporary theory and new movements in scholarly research and teaching,“ said Jeffrey S. Librett, head of the German and Scandinavian department.
Taylor, a physics professor, is known to use humor to make science interesting to students who otherwise would not find the subject compelling. One student wrote on a class evaluation, “This was my favorite course this term and I hate science.” He is an accomplished research scholar who chooses to devote time and talent to teaching lower division undergraduate students. Taylor also holds courtesy appointments in the UO art and psychology departments and is a member of the Materials Science Institute and the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences. Beyond campus, he mentors high school science teachers and regularly lectures around the state.
Mark Unno, professor of religious studies, is a teacher of teachers who personally engages with students and authored a manual on academic paper writing that is widely used by students and colleagues. “I marvel at the atmosphere in his classroom — it is relaxing and welcoming, like a warm conversation with a group of friends,” said Daniel Falk, head of the Department of Religious Studies. Unno’s courses range from introductory lecture classes on Asian religions and Buddhist studies to original courses such as, “The Bull in the China Shop: The Oxen at the Intersection of Nature, Society and Religion,” that resulted in Temple Grandin, the autistic expert in animal husbandry, visiting UO for a public lecture and appearance at his class.
