| February 19, 1999 |
|
Calvin College Chimes
|
IN OTHER NEWS:
Homecoming brings students, alumni together
Course requirements to be changed in 2000
Some zany homecoming ideas ditched for reality
English professor awarded for exemplary teaching
|
By Suzanne Winter
STAFF WRITER
“You can’t have fun teaching without good students,” said English professor Mary Ann Walters, who received Calvin’s Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching today.
Walters is the latest recipient of this annual award. While working on her Ph.D. at Michigan State University, she taught as a graduate assistant. For the rest of her 36 years of teaching, she has taught at Calvin, which she attended as an undergraduate. Walters said she was surprised when she was notified about her upcoming receipt of the award. However, she had not given it much thought, since she was busy with the interviewing process for incoming faculty members. As a private sort of person, she didn’t find it too difficult to keep the news of her award from her colleagues, who were not to know about it until today. She added that it really wasn’t hard to keep a secret “when no one asked you about it.”
Walters has a unique teaching style. For a course in Shakespeare that she taught this past Interim, she replaced the final exam with a class viewing of “Shakespeare in Love.” For her English- 101 classes, students are paired with local senior citizens. Over the course of the semester, their assignment is to write the biographies of these senior citizens. Walters believes that this technique gives students more of a specific goal than having many unrelated writing assignments. “I’d like to thank all of my students,” said Walters, who attributes the pleasure of teaching to her students.
Walters is the seventh recipient of this award. The first was her former colleague Ken Kuipers, who passed away last Easter. Walters is the first female faculty member to be so honored, but she highlighted the similarities between Kuipers and herself. Kuipers had also taught in the English department. Some months after his death, Walters moved into his old office, where she can still see birds visit the feeders he hung up outside the window. “Same office, same birds,” she said.
In 1993, then-president Anthony Diekema instituted the award. President of Calvin for 20 years, Diekema created this award “because he always recognized that at the heart of a Calvin education is the excellence and dedication of our faculty,” said Phil DeHaan, director of media relations at Calvin. “He knew that we have faculty members here at Calvin who could teach any place in the world yet choose Calvin because of their desire to be at a place that is both academically excellent and distinctively Christian.”
The teaching award includes a medallion and a financial stipend, made possible by the George B. and Margaret K. Tinholt Endowment fund. “Obviously, the money is not at the heart of what the award is all about,” said DeHaan. “The stipend is simply a concrete affirmation that when it comes to great teachers, Calvin is willing to put its money where its mouth is.”
As for the criteria behind the award, DeHaan said it “honors a Calvin College faculty member for extraordinary skills and commitment; for influencing the education and careers of students in profoundly Christian ways; for service to the college, the Christian church, the profession, and the community; and most of all, for providing Calvin students and all in the college with a shining standard of intelligence, wisdom, Christian dedication and personal character.”
BACK TONEWS