Braun, Joukowsky will receive Sheridan Awards

They will receive their awards April 30 in conjunction with the annual Faculty Teaching Awards and the Presidential Graduate Student Teaching Awards.

Lundy Braun, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Martha Sharp Joukowsky, professor of anthropology and Old World art and archaeology, have been selected to receive the Harriet W. Sheridan Award for Distinguished Contribution to Teaching and Learning.

The two were nominated by faculty colleagues for their role in supporting teaching and learning within and beyond their own discipline. They will receive the awards on April 30.

The award, presented by the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, recognizes Brown faculty who have demonstrated their commitment to reflective teaching as an integral part of the enterprise of higher education. Such demonstration includes attention to the improvement of individual undergraduate and/or graduate instruction, support of departmental initiatives to develop and implement programs which actively encourage teaching within their discipline by faculty, graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants, and support for University-wide initiatives which seek to integrate teaching and research.

A scholar in the field of papilloma viruses and cervical cancer, Braun has been recognized by her colleagues for the many ways which her teaching philosophy has influenced her junior and senior faculty colleagues, both within and beyond her department. She was cited for encouraging active learning in lectures as well as case-based laboratory sessions. Colleagues noted the example she sets as a faculty member who worked to ensure that learning in her course was integrated into the departmental curriculum. A junior colleague from outside her department observed that her work across disciplines is a model for integrating teaching and research, and praised her generous, collegial and insightful mentoring beyond departmental confines. A graduate student commented that Braun helps students to constantly self-evaluate their performance as a teacher – the essential component in developing a reflective teaching practice.

Colleagues in the Department of Anthropology nominated Joukowsky as the model of a distinguished multidisciplinary scholar whose teaching is predicated on student learning. A long-term faculty liaison to the Sheridan Center, Joukowsky was cited for encouraging pedagogical excellence among graduate students in the department. She includes graduate and undergraduate students on her annual expeditions to Petra and uses this opportunity to help graduate students see how to productively integrate undergraduate teaching with research year-round. One colleague noted that graduate students constantly remark upon her assistance in helping them think about their teaching. Another commented, “Martha Joukowsky is a devoted teacher who is as eager about improving her own pedagogical skills as she is in imparting them to others.”

The Sheridan Award will be presented this year in conjunction with the annual Faculty Teaching Awards and the Presidential Graduate Student Teaching Awards at the annual Teaching at Brown Reception, which will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30, in Andrews Dining Hall. All members of the Brown community are encouraged to attend.