Charles S. Bullock
Richard B. Russell Research Professor of Political Science
By Beth Roberts
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One of Charles Bullock’s regular teaching assignments is the introductory course in American government required of all UGA undergraduates. Students are sometimes unenthusiastic about a required course far from their area of major study, but their high evaluations of the course, consistently among the highest in the department, demonstrate that they are glad to have taken it.
“It’s amazing that someone could actually get me interested in the news!” wrote one student. “I can remember thinking I could never really care about things like that. But now not only do I care, I want to know. This is a change that will no doubt stick with me for the rest of my life.”
In fact, says political science department head Robert Grafstein, Bullock’s “classes are justifiably considered a key rite of passage by our political science majors and many other students. . . . [He] has become a teaching institution.”
In addition to the introductory government course, Bullock regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in legislative politics and Southern politics. He requires extensive writing and research of his students, and is known as a stringent grader, providing detailed, typed feedback on papers even in large classes. As a result, papers written by his students regularly win research awards from the Georgia Political Science Association.
Over and over again on course evaluations students remark that Bullock’s courses are “the most demanding I have ever taken.” “This course was very demanding,” said one student, “but class discussions were very informative.”
Bullock often co-teaches courses with other UGA faculty and has taught in the university’s study-abroad program in Verona, Italy, four times. He has participated in the Freshman College Experience every year since it began.
He supervises about 15 legislative interns a year, for a cumulative total of hundreds over his career. Many of his students are now major figures in Georgia politics, including the current secretary of state, the House speaker pro tem, the House whip, the Senate minority whip, key members of the governor’s administration, and numerous state legislators, campaign managers and lobbyists.
“Your Southern politics class sparked my initial interest in all of this,” wrote one former student who is now involved in state government. “Thanks for putting me on the right track.” Another former student, now a television reporter, wrote, “That one class prepared me for the types of things I run into every day, more than you can know.”
Bullock’s deep knowledge of U.S. and Southern politics is the foundation on which he builds his classes. He is the author of 19 books and more than 160 articles and book chapters, and he serves on five editorial boards. At UGA he has been awarded the William A. Owens Creative Research Award. Students recognize and admire that expertise.
“His knowledge was unbelievable,” one student commented. Another wrote, “I couldn’t have asked for a more knowledgeable instructor on this subject. Dr. Bullock is like a human encyclopedia.”
“His knowledge of Southern politics was more than impressive—it was mind-boggling,” one student concluded.
Woody Beck
Professor of Sociology
By Philip Lee Williams
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His name is Elwood Meredith Beck Jr., but for nearly 30 years at the University of Georgia his colleagues and many students have known him as Woody.
That comfortable nickname fits his easygoing nature, but it might mask an academic rigor that has made him one of UGA’s most outstanding teachers and scholars since he arrived on campus in 1976.
“Dr. Beck is one of those rare teachers whose instruction leaves its mark long after the class has ended,” says sociology department head William Finlay. Indeed, Beck’s students have consistently rated him one of the best teachers in the department, and his courses are much sought-after.
From 300-student introductory sociology sections to seminar-sized graduate courses, Beck has amassed a remarkable record. Finlay says Beck’s success is due, at least in part, to a combination of the passionate and the dispassionate.
“He is passionate about those issues which he teaches, such as inequality and racial violence, because these are the topics of his own research,” says Finlay. “At the same time he allows and indeed encourages students to draw their own conclusions based on the available evidence.”
The scope of Beck’s work has been amazing. He has taught in the Globis study-abroad program and later directed the UGA study-abroad program in Avignon. He was also one of the initial members of the Dean’s Forum, a joint program of the colleges of arts and sciences and education that focused on teaching issues.
Even more important perhaps was the substantial change Beck instituted when he was head of the department of sociology. Recognizing and rewarding good teaching became a central tenet of sociology, one that has altered the way the entire department focuses on its work.
The author of two books and numerous articles and book chapters, Beck earned his bachelor’s degree in American history from the University of Alabama and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Tennessee. After early academic appointments at the universities of Colorado and Michigan, he came to UGA as an associate professor in 1976.
Beck served as department head from 1993 to 2002.
Student evaluations of Beck continuously use superlatives. One student taking his course in race and ethnicity had this to say: “I think Dr. Beck is one of the best professors I have had at the university. He presents information clearly and makes it interesting. I feel that I will take a lot of knowledge and understanding from this course. I loved his stories and knowledge of the information he presented. He is a great professor.”
Another student echoed those sentiments: “This is a superior college course, and Dr. Beck is a superior professor. This class refreshed my learning in college, and he made the information fascinating and relevant, had great concern for students when they needed anything, and made class truly enjoyable. One of my best classes ever.”
Finlay perhaps put it best: “Woody Beck epitomizes the ideal of the teacher-scholar.”
Carole Henry
Associate Professor of Art
By Philip Lee Williams
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“Discovering art (and its connections to our lives) is among the most wonderful gifts a teacher can give students. At the University of Georgia, few professors have made that gift as enduring or as personal as Carole Henry.
A former art teacher in the public schools who has achieved a much-honored career as a college professor, Henry is “considered to be among the most generous, dedicated and well-prepared teachers” in UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art, according to its director, Carmon Colangelo.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Henry started her career in art education in public schools after receiving her bachelor’s degree in art education from Georgia Southern University. After teaching for a number of years, she came to graduate school at UGA, receiving her master’s and doctoral degrees in 1977 and 1985, respectively.
Along the way, she has been showing students how to understand art, first as a teaching assistant and later as an assistant and associate professor. Her list of honors and awards is impressive, but her students speak best for what she has accomplished in her professional life.
“This was such a wonderful class,” one student writes. “Thank you, Dr. Henry, for your enthusiasm and passion for the subject matter.” Another student says, “This was the best, most useful class I have ever taken in undergraduate or graduate art education.”
Colangelo notes that Henry’s contributions to UGA extend far beyond her own very active classroom.
“Dr. Henry was awarded the national Manuel Barkan Memorial Award in 2000 for her scholarly contributions through publications directly related to teaching, and it is clear she is widely considered an expert,” he says.
In 2003, Henry began an art education program at UGA’s study-abroad program in Cortona, Italy, where her students teach art in the Italian elementary schools.
She also has been extremely active in the Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Program, which is forging new alliances to improve K–12 public education in the state. The inclusion of the arts within GSTEP is directly related to her efforts, and Henry chairs the GSTEP fine arts curriculum team. She has already published one book on middle school art and has submitted another on the museum experience.
“Educators have always known that motivation is the key to student achievement,” says Mary Lazzari, art teacher at Timothy Road Elementary School in Athens. “Dr. Carole Henry has a contagious spirit that inspires and energizes her students. She has a joyous attitude toward life and learning, and all around her thrive from her compassionate nature.”
While her colleagues at UGA give her work rave reviews, her students may be the best judges of why Henry’s work is so extraordinary.
“I have never had another teacher who impacted my life like Dr. Henry,” one former student writes. “I trust and admire her and continue now to seek her trust and support as a professional.”
Marcus Fechheimer
Professor of Cellular biology
By Philip Lee Williams
A gifted communicator . . . an intellectually rigorous scientist . . . eloquent and even moving—those are words one hears over and over about Marcus Fechheimer.
Since he came to UGA in 1984, Fechheimer has been deeply concerned with what former cellular biology department head Joe Crim calls “engaged learning.”
“He is, in my opinion, without peer as a mentor for undergraduate research,” says Crim, now associate vice president for instruction. “Students who work in his laboratory have a fully immersive experience. They conduct novel research involving the latest approaches. . . . His students frequently enter first-rate graduate programs.”
Students in Fechheimer’s cell biology lecture courses are quick to agree.
“This has been the best class and the hardest class I’ve ever had,” says one student. “Dr. Fechheimer is excellent or even better than excellent. He’s not only good at explaining the material; he really cares about his students. He’s kind and funny, which makes the class fun and enjoyable. He wants the very best for his students—and it shows.”
As a teacher and research scientist, Fechheimer’s accomplishments have been considerable. He holds several adjunct appointments in other departments at UGA and has received extensive grant support for his research from such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Alzheimer’s Foundation. He also has authored more than 100 publications and spoken at dozens of national and international conferences.
While those accomplishments are remarkable, his work as a teacher has also consistently drawn only the highest praise. He is a winner of both the General Sandy Beaver Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Beaver Teaching Professorship. He has been a senior teaching fellow at UGA, winner of the Award for Excellence in Mentoring from UGA’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities, and a member of the UGA Teaching Academy. In 2003, he received the Career Center Faculty Recognition Award for contributions to development of UGA students.
Fechheimer’s own teaching philosophy makes clear how important he considers this part of his faculty position.
“The teacher/scholar paradigm has been a guiding principle of my career, and I have attempted to excel in both instruction and research,” he writes. “[I hope that my students] develop lifelong skills including self-confidence, perseverance, critical thinking, satisfaction derived from achievement and an unyielding dedication to integrity.”
Trish Kalivoda, associate vice president for Public Service and Outreach and co-director of the Senior Fellows and Lilly Fellows programs at UGA, points out what students have noted time and again.
“Over the years, he has developed a highly effective approach to testing and grading,” she writes. “The approach is rigorous. His assignments and tests are difficult. But, at the same time, Dr. Fechheimer is viewed by his students as fair and compassionate.”
As Crim remarks, Fechheimer has “attained a transformative level that is truly remarkable.”
Tricia Lootens
Associate Professor of English
By Philip Lee Williams
Tricia Lootens’s students don’t mince words when it comes to her marvelous teaching ability.
“Dr. Lootens is the best professor I’ve had in the English department so far,” one student writes. “She is a brilliant lecturer who encourages students to participate in discussion without intimidating them. . . . I did more work in this class than any other, and I enjoyed it the most.”
Lootens’s teaching and scholarly records are the subject of admiration by students and colleagues alike.
“She teaches superlatively at every level of our curriculum and across a spectrum of courses, ranging from her specialization in Victorian literature to basic composition, survey courses of British literature, women in literature, research methods and women’s studies,” says Nelson Hilton, head of the English department. “She has made a profound and ongoing contribution to our ongoing quality of education.”
After studying as a special student at the University of Zurich in 1974, Lootens earned master’s degrees in German and English, as well as a Ph.D., from Indiana University. She came to UGA as an assistant professor in 1988.
For Lootens, teaching and research work together. Although much of her work links the study of Victorian poetry to romantic period studies or 19th-century American studies, she has also published on Victorian appropriations of Shakespeare, as well as on teaching Victorian literature and on gothic modes of social criticism.
Her book,
Lost Saints: Gender, Silence and Victorian Literary Canonization, won a UGA Creative Research Medal. In 2000, the Keats-Shelley Association of America chose one of her essays for a coveted national Romantic Period Essay Award.
But teaching has remained at the heart of Lootens’s work at UGA.
“I value the unpredictable power of actual classroom presence,” she writes. “I want my students to savor talk that is at once risky and respectful. I want us to work together to learn to be simultaneously passionate, generous, and precise.”
Her colleagues agree.
“Writing is essential to Tricia Lootens’s classroom,” writes Christy Desmet, one of her colleagues in the English department. “Even after 15 years, she still responds to the multiple writings of each student throughout the semester. In this way, she not only helps her students to become better thinkers and more fluent writers, but she also knows their intellectual habits more than any other teacher could.”
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Richard B. Russell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate
Teaching
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Creative Research Awards and Creative Research Medals
