Honoring Berkeley’s top teachers
April 25 ceremony open to faculty, staffApril 25 ceremony open to faculty, staffApril 25 ceremony open to faculty, staff

18 April 2001 |

The 19th-century historian Henry Brooks Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, once said that “a teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

It’s that enduring influence — by inspiring and enlightening countless students — that distinguishes four top Berkeley instructors from their peers. On April 25, the campus recognizes them with the Distinguished Teaching Award, Berkeley’s highest prize for teaching. Since 1959, when the award first was given, only 194 out of 4,000 professors have received this honor.

The winners — Sara Beckman, senior lecturer of management in technology; Carolyn Bertozzi, assistant professor of chemistry; Seda Chavdarian, French lecturer; and Ronald Gronsky, professor of material science and engineering — will be honored at a 5 p.m. ceremony in Zellerbach Playhouse.

The ceremony, which is open to the public, also honors this year’s recipients of the Educational Initiatives Award — the College of Chemistry for Digital Chem 1A and the Department of Anthropology for Multimedia Authoring in Anthropology — and the new Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education, Psychology Professor Martin Covington.

Educational Initiatives Awards provide departments with $10,000 cash for creation of outstanding programs that have made a significant contribution to undergraduate education. The Presidential Chair, a three-year appointment, encourages development of new courses or enhancement of existing ones through new approaches to teaching.

The Distinguished Teaching Award, Educational Initiatives Award and Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education are given by the Committee on Teaching, a committee of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate.

A reception, in the Alumni House’s Toll Room, follows the ceremony.