Cornell President Hunter Rawlings has named the university's 1999 Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellows, recognizing effective, inspiring and distinguished teaching of undergraduate students.
The winners are: Professor Florence Berger, School of Hotel Administration; Professor Daniel Schwarz, Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Professor Charles H.K. Williamson, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering. The awards -- $25,000 to each professor over five years -- are named for the immediate past chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees, Stephen H. Weiss '57, who endowed the program.
A dinner on campus Oct. 7 honored both the Weiss fellows and the 1999 recipients of the Appel Fellowships for Humanists and Social Scientists in the College of Arts and Sciences, named last April: Christopher T. Collins, an associate professor of linguistics, and Timothy J. Vogelsang, an associate professor of economics and statistical science. Established in 1995 by Helen and Robert Appel, the fellowships honor creativity in teaching and research among newer faculty. They enable recipients to take a year's sabbatical leave, at full salary, to write, develop new courses, conduct research or otherwise enrich their teaching and scholarship.
Here are biographies of this year's honorees, adapted from ones compiled by George Lowery in Alumni Affairs and Development Communications:
As a teacher, adviser, Faculty Fellow and mentor, Berger has given hundreds of Hotel School students the guidance, encouragement and motivation to succeed academically and as individuals. Berger teaches courses in management operations, human resources and organizational behavior at the School of Hotel Administration as well as courses in the Center for Professional Development and in Cornell Adult University. A popular Berger course is Organizational Behavior and Human Relations Skills.
Berger received her bachelor's degree from Goucher College, her master's degree from Harvard and her Ph.D. from Cornell.
Students report that Berger's love of teaching is manifest in her lively lectures and carefully designed instructional plans, which emphasize creative thinking and collaborative teams. Known for her energy and enthusiasm, Berger has been praised by students for her extraordinary ability to engage them in the subject matter at hand and stimulate their interest in the world around them. She has won four awards for her outstanding teaching, among them the Merrill Presidential Scholar outstanding educator.
"Professor Berger's contributions are unique," wrote a colleague, " because they encompass not only the intellectual development, but also the emotional and spiritual development of students. She believes that life must be balanced and that academic achievement must be accompanied by personal growth if the true meaning of a university education is to be realized."
Schwarz is perhaps best known as a scholar of the writings of James Joyce and Joseph Conrad. His major fields are the late 19th- and early 20th-century British novel, literary theory and modernist literature of the 20th century. Students describe Schwarz as a passionate teacher. In 1998 he received the Stephen and Margery Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, the College of Arts and Sciences' highest teaching honor.
Schwarz also is a prolific writer whose many critically acclaimed books elaborate on his teaching interests. The most-recent are: Reading Joyce's Ulysses (St. Martin's Press, 1987), Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (St. Martin's, 1997) and Imagining the Holocaust (St. Martin's, 1999).
Schwarz earned his bachelor's degree at Union College and his master's and doctoral degrees at Brown University.
A mentor and adviser who has helped many students in crisis, Schwarz has served on numerous committees on undergraduate affairs and directed nine National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars. He is an avid tennis player who advises Cornell's men's varsity tennis team.
A colleague of Schwarz's writes: "Dan's teaching is marked by a terrific, and infectious, enthusiasm. He gives students the sense of how works of literature, while they are the products of their authors, are also the products of the wider culture in which those authors worked. Students in his classes feel almost as if they are being taken back into that culture. ... It is this broad, generous, inquisitive spirit that the students respond to so well."
At the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Williamson teaches difficult, required courses in which students' ratings of instructors are typically lower than in smaller, elective courses. Yet students consistently rank him very highly within the college. Indeed, his detailed supplementary course notes are described by many students as far superior to the actual textbooks used in the course.
A student wrote: "Dr. Williamson makes fluid mechanics exciting and also acknowledges the hard work students put into his and other engineering courses. He made us feel proud of our work, but at the same time inspired us to do better. It was obvious he loved to teach, and this really made a difference in how the students approached the subject."
A colleague wrote: "I do not believe that I have seen Charles's equal in his ability to translate the excitement of research into the classroom, and to engage undergraduates in the research process."
Williamson was educated in England, receiving his bachelor's degree with first-class honors in naval architecture from Southampton University in 1978 and his doctorate in fluid mechanics from Cambridge University in 1982. He has won seven teaching prizes at Cornell, among them two Dean's Prizes, two Cornell Society of Engineers-Pi Tau Sigma Outstanding Teaching Prizes, a national $10,000 W.M. Keck Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Panhellenic and Interfraternity Outstanding Professor in Engineering Award. His teaching innovations include creating a "laboratory on wheels," to demonstrate key features of flow fields and the screening of the movie "Top Gun" to explain vorticity.
Collins earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a doctorate in linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He catalogs rare languages and researches the theory of syntax, comparative syntax of African languages and English syntax.
In class he is known as a hands-on teacher who emphasizes classroom participation. He draws on audio-visual presentations, sounds, examples from a variety of languages and other teaching techniques to illustrate the many structures of human communication. He cultivates his students' curiosity by allowing them to pursue individual areas of interest, often sparking the excitement of discovery within them.
One demonstration of his dedication: In a large introductory course he teaches involving many problem-set assignments, he insists on evaluating each student's papers to learn where students experience difficulty, then adjusts his teaching accordingly.
Collins is generous with his time as an adviser, and his commitment to teaching undergraduates in and outside the classroom is well known among his students and colleagues. One student described him as "one of the most able teachers I have ever had." Another wrote: "I remember sitting in his class transfixed by the intricacies of language and the beauty of the man's capacity to explain it." A third described a class he took with Collins as "one of the most rewarding classes I have taken during my time at Cornell."
Vogelsang received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate in economics from Princeton University. He teaches econometrics, international monetary theory and international trade. Despite the demanding nature of these rigorous subjects, enrollment in his courses continues to rise, spurred by his reputation among students for lucid exposition and innovative presentations. He also is known for his accessibility to students and for his interest in them as individuals.
A student writes of Vogelsang: "His door is frequently open to any student who wants to drop in and chat about any issue, academic or personal. ... It is the general consensus among economics majors that Dr. Vogelsang's commitment to undergraduate students and their education is unparalleled by any professor at Cornell. We are extremely fortunate to have him as a professor and a friend."
Of Vogelsang's teaching style, a colleague writes: "Tim is a gifted and wonderful educator and all-around great professor. I have quite a bit of contact with undergraduate majors in the economics department and other undergraduates taking economics courses. Students from all over campus are always singing Tim's praises."
Weiss fellows are nominated by a committee of students and faculty and selected by the president. Appel fellows are selected by the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Cornell administrators.
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