Elaine Chun and Tony Jarrells Win Teaching Award
The English Department continues to honor the tremendous accomplishments of its faculty in the classroom through its annual Teaching Award. Most recently, Dr. Elaine Chun and Dr. Anthony Jarrells were honored with the award for their teaching in 2017.
During the award year, Dr. Chun taught a broad array of classes, including “Language and Gender” (ENGL 439), “Language in Society” (ENGL 455), and “Language and Racism” (ENGL 239). A student from Dr. Chun’s “Introduction to Language” commented: “I loved how much she loved what she was teaching. It was obvious she had a passion for what she does and wants to spread and inspire that same appreciation of linguistics in her students.” Another student wrote: “I am in my senior year of college and of all the professors I have had at USC, Chun is easily my favorite. She has managed to take a very sensitive subject matter and relay it to the class in a way that makes it not only easy to understand, but respects the perspectives of everyone in the room. She clearly knows the subject matter very well. This course gave a very intrinsic look into what racism is and how we see it every day and do not even realize it. I believe it has not only granted me greater knowledge, but has made me a more thoughtful person.”
Dr. Jarrells taught three classes of English Literature (ENGL 288) and the graduate course “Enlightenment and its Discontents: Studies in Romantic and Victorian Literature” (ENGL 820). Students in these literature classes wrote: “I appreciated the Socratic style classes. It made reading the texts and discussing them really fun and enhanced my understanding of the texts”; “I have never been in an English class where people so readily discussed the texts being read, but his passion for whatever he teaches is contagious and infects the rest of the class in a good way”; and Jarrells “[made] sure this course was interesting while promoting growth in students’ analytical skill, writing style, and discussion abilities.”
Kahlil Gibran described a great teacher as that extraordinary person who “does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” The appreciation, enthusiastic comments, and outstanding evaluations received by Dr. Chun and Dr. Jarrells suggest their success at this strategy.
Congratulations to our colleagues for this well-deserved recognition.