Undergrads Pick Favorite Teachers

An expert on modern American public policy the professor of a popular Core Curriculum music course, and a teaching fellow in two Core literature courses Monday were named the winners of the third annual Joseph R. Levinson Memorial Teaching Prize.

Each spring the prize, awarded through the Undergraduate Council to outstanding teachers of undergraduates, is given to a member of the senior faculty, a junior faculty member, and a teaching fellow.

This year's winners in the respective categories are: Naumburg Professor of Music Luise Vosgerchian, Assistant Professor of History Bradford A. Lee, and teaching fellow Debra Carlin.

Nominations are solicited from undergraduates by the Council's Academic Committee, said Eliot House representative Thomas C. Cronin '86, who chairs the sub-committee of the Academic Committee which picks the winners.

To nominate a professor or teaching fellow, students had to submit a short essay explaining why the instructor could excite and show concern for undergraduates.

The award, set up by Leo Levinson '83, honors his late father, a Chinese intellectual historian.

"I'm really happy. I'm really pleased," said Lee, who currently teaches History 1711. "The United States and East Asia" and History 1619. "American Public Policy in the 20th Century." In the fall he taught History 1962. "International Relations since 1870."

Echoing Lee's reaction, Carlin, a teaching fellow and graduate student in the English Department, said, I'm very flattered. I'm very happy, I'm very grateful."

"She's the best section leader I've had here," said Barry J. Fisher '85, one of the students who nominated her. Fisher said he nominated Carlin because of "her love of teaching and concern for students."

Carlin currently is a section leader in Literature and Arts A-37, "Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama," and in Afro-American Studies 137, "Black Women Writer." Last semester she was a section leader in Literature and Arts C-31. "Lieterature of the Outsider in America." Carlin has also taught sections of Expository Writing in the past.

Vosgerchian, who could not be reached for comment, teaches the popular Literature and Arts B-54, "The Development of the String Quartet" and Music 51, "Theory I."

"She's really enthusiastic, she's really in to what she's doing, and she conveys that [to students]," said Richard D. Borovoy '88, one of about 500 students in her Core course.

The awards will be formally presented at a Caber House dinner tomorrow night. At the dinner, plaques which will hang in Lamont Library will be presented to the winners.

On the menu for dinner is lasagna, broiled fish, rice pilaf, stir fries, clover-leaf rolls, strawberry shot-cake, and tossed salad, according to Ann Sicari, manager of the Quad dining halls