Best Teachers Win Award

In presenting teaching fellow Michael L. Dougan one of the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Awards last night, Ashish Agrawal ’08, told a story of Dougan’s dedication to his students: two days before his wife’s due date, the molecular and cellular biology TF held a review session.

Students and faculty gathered last night to hear stories of dedication like this one and celebrate exemplary teaching at Harvard by honoring the nominees for the 25th annual Levenson Prize.

The recipients of the three awards—one senior faculty member, one junior faculty member, and one teaching fellow—are selected each year by the Undergraduate Council from a pool of candidates nominated by students.

Each award is presented by one of the students who nominated that particular honoree. East Asian Languages and Civilizations department chair Michael Puett was given the senior faculty award by Roland Lamb ’06-’08, who was the Chinese history professor’s advisee for four years before graduating this past January.

“He has been the single most important factor with coming to terms with what I want to do,” said Lamb, who plans to follow his mentor into academia. “I’ve seen him have that influence on others.”

John Stewart, a senior preceptor in music, received the junior faculty award. Julia S. Cavallaro ‘08, who presented Stewart’s plaque, said that the Music 51 professor is often cited as the reason students choose to concentrate in music.

“He knows just when to encourage and when to demand more,” Cavallaro said.

UC President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 said in a brief speech that this banquet was one of the only chances the UC gets to celebrate positive aspects of the College. “Everyone in this room is an example of someone doing something very well at Harvard,” Sundquist said.

The UC received 208 nominations for the awards this year.

“If nothing else, the numbers should tell you that there is excellent teaching at Harvard,” said Student Affairs Committee chair Jon T. Staff V ’10.

The students and the teachers they nominated were invited to the banquet in Dunster House, where psychology professor Stephen Pinker gave the keynote address. The winners do not receive cash prizes; instead, the money that was given for the award pays for the dinner.

The commonality among the candidates was not just brilliance, Staff said in his introductory remarks. “It was the teachers who transformed students, who found an interest the student hadn’t had before,” Staff said. “We read about this again and again.”

In the interlude between dinner and dessert, Richard Levenson ’74 spoke about his late father, a 1941 Harvard graduate and a professor of Chinese history at Berkeley for whom the award is named. Other members of the Levenson family also attended the banquet.

Though he never met Levenson, Puett said he worked with many people who knew his fellow Chinese history scholar well, and he said he thinks of Levenson as his teacher by association.

“I certainly would hope to consider myself part of that legacy,” Puett said.

—Staff writer Chelsea L. Shover can be reached at clshover@fas.harvard.edu.