Annual Awards Honor SPU Standouts
The students, faculty, and staff have spoken. At the annual President’s Spring Forum on May 22, 2014, ASSP President Isaac Gundersen ’14 announced that Associate Professor of Music Brian Chin was the students’ choice for Professor of the Year. Commended for integrating mind and body in the teaching of music theory and aural skills, Chin was further honored for pioneering a support system in which learning assistants meet with students in small groups multiple times each week. “The small groups prevent struggling first-year music students from slipping through the cracks,” Gundersen said.
Meanwhile, faculty members honored Professor of Interior Design and Housing Sandra Hartje, of the Family and Consumer Sciences Department, as Teacher of the Year and nominated her for the CASE U.S. Professor of the Year Award. “Professor Hartje asks her students to ponder difficult questions and unquestioned assumptions that are just outside the line of sight for most of us,” Provost Jeff Van Duzer wrote in his letter of nomination. “Students’ lives and career trajectories are changed as a result of her courses.”
Posted: Wednesday, September 10, 2014