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Columns::April 21, 2003
UGA’s top students and teachers recognized at Honors Day ceremony
University hosts state championship for future problem solvers
The greening of South Campus
Flower(ing) power: UGA scientists plot key events in plant evolution
Office of Research Services appoints a new director
Education dean receives diversity award from housing residents
On-the-job training: Engineers team up with businesses for new designs
Lifelong interest in animals leads prof to career as wildlife biologist
Retirees
Kudos
Forum essay: International education
Making a scene
Across the board
Campus News
Russell Award
Three UGA faculty members will receive Richard B. Russell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the 2003 Faculty Recognition Banquet in the Georgia Center on April 24. Russell Awards recognize outstanding teaching of undergraduates by faculty in their first decade of teaching. Winners receive $5,000 from the Richard B. Russell Foundation of Atlanta.
Carolina Acosta-Alzuru
Assistant Professor of Advertising and Public Relations
Affectionately known as Dr. A, Carolina Acosta-Alzuru inspires public relations students at the Grady College and helps bridge
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Carolina Acosta-Alzuru
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the ever-so-small gap between college and the real world.
The Caracas, Venezuela, native adds a unique cultural dimension to the college and the classroom. She believes knowledge of other cultures and realities is key to students’ personal and professional development.
She knows who she is, what the world demands and what her students need, and she has knack for connecting the three. As one public relations campaigns student wrote on an evaluation, “Dr. A is the best teacher I’ve had at UGA. . . . Everyone deserves to be taught by her.” An evaluation comment from a graphics communication class: “She is what all teachers should aspire to be.”
Acosta-Alzuru’s teaching philosophy is built on the idea that, as a teacher, she has the opportunity to take students beyond the academic environment and to engage them in their communities and their world. Former student Rebecca O’Brien says, “Dr. A understands the importance of learning, but she also understands that life itself is a part of learning and how important it is to not miss the world around you.”
“She is the inimitable blend of teacher, mother, friend, confidant, disciplinarian, expert, adviser, guru, boss and co-worker,” wrote one student who studied with her in 2001. “I left her course knowing not only how to create an entire public relations campaign, but also how to speak more eloquently in public, how to value cooperation and teamwork, and how to require patience, confidence and assurance in myself.”
In his book The Courage to Teach, Parker J. Palmer says “good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” Her students and colleagues agree: Good teaching comes from Carolina Acosta-Alzuru.
Martin Kagel
Associate Professor of Germanic and Slavic Languages
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Martin Kagel
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Martin Kagel believes the classroom is a place where respect is not commanded by the garb of authority but by the power of argument in an open intellectual exchange among equals. Learning for him means understanding factual knowledge, but it also means understanding how to learn from others.
Now in his seventh year at UGA, he was hired primarily because of his research potential as a scholar of 18th-century German literature. He has not only met those expectations but complemented them with astounding success in the classroom.
“Hiring Martin Kagel out of graduate school has been something like bringing up a brilliant young pitcher from the farm club and finding out he not only throws 98 mph but also switch-hits and bats .350,” says his department head, Max Reinhart.
A native of Germany, he earned his master’s degree from the Freie Universität Berlin and his doctorate summa cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hired as an assistant professor in the department of Germanic and Slavic languages at UGA in 1996, he was promoted to associate professor in 2001.
Already named to a Lilly Teaching Fellowship and winner of a Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award, Kagel’s work has drawn consistent praise from students.
“We were inspired to do the amount of work we did, I think, because we had in Dr. Kagel a professor who was a much finer student than any of his pupils,” says one former student.
His fellow faculty members have been equally impressed. Katharina Wilson, a professor of comparative literature who served as his mentor in the Lilly teaching program, speaks for many.
“The rapport Dr. Kagel has established with his students would bring honor even to a senior member of the faculty,” she says. “The respect and affection he has earned from them are remarkable. . . . He is quite simply an extraordinary teacher who deserves recognition.”
C. Rhett Jackson
Assistant Professor of Hydrology
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Rhett Jackson
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Rhett Jackson has been a teacher and researcher at UGA since 1997. He teaches soils and hydrology, forest hydrology, introduction to wetlands, and hillslope hydrology. He uses creative techniques to help students apply principles from advanced algebra, calculus, statistics, physics and chemistry to applied problems in water resources.
Students report enthusiastically on his success. “This was, by far, my favorite class at UGA so far,” writes one student. “Dr. Jackson made sure that the class was interesting, logical and practically useful.”
“This course has been one of the hardest, yet most rewarding, I have taken,” writes another.
Jackson helped lead efforts in 2001 to establish the UGA Water Resources Certificate Program, which admits science majors from across campus. He became the program’s director in 2003.
Before coming to UGA, Jackson was senior hydrologist at Pentec Environmental in Edmunds, Wash., an environmental consulting firm.
He also worked as a hydrologist and planner for King County Public Works in Seattle and as a groundwater project engineer in Los Angeles County. Since coming to UGA, he has served as the adviser to the student chapter of the American Water Resource Association Club and as major professor to 15 master of science and three doctoral students.
Jackson’s research focuses on the effects of forestry activities and urbanization on streamflow, water quality and aquatic habitat.
Recently he has led a multi-phase project investigating the effectiveness of forestry best-management practices in reducing pollutant discharge. Jackson’s interdisciplinary research involves collaboration with aquatic ecologists, fish and wildlife biologists and entomologists.
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