Professor: Angus Kress Gillespie
Associate Professor: Emily Bartels
Assistant Professor: Jan Mohlman
Teaching Assistant: Florence Quideau
Teachign Assistant:: Mohannad Abdo
Teaching Assistant: Andrew Baxter
Non-tenure Track Faculty: Lew Hirsch
Non-tenure Track Faculty: Gary Brill
Non-tenure Track Faculty: Julie Rajan

Professor Angus Kress Gillespie is a scholar and teacher whose intellectual breadth covers such topics as folk culture, Jerseyana, maritime culture, regionalism, the American South, the Twin Towers, the American Best seller, US-Philippine relations, the Gulf Wars 1 and 2. Each class is carefully crafted to give students a thorough historical and cultural explanation of a topic, as well as rigorous critique of subject and method.  His teaching is all about listening, questioning, and being responsive, as well as remembering that each student contributes differently. He works hard to elicit responses from even the quietest student, and he pushes all his students to excel. Furthermore, Professor Gilllespie is one of the most dynamic lecturers—he fills the space of an 80-minute lecture with the careful weaving of broad-stroke historical panoramas with eloquent attention to anecdote and detail. As one student reported, “[during lecture] he has us in the palm of his hand.” His teaching method is dazzling and truly interdisciplinary, in the best sense of the word.

Professor Gilllespie also takes the time to nurture and develop the minds and talents of his outstanding students, many of whom have gone on to graduate school in material culture, museum studies, American Studies, and history; others have gone on to have successful professional careers in music management, maritime law, and high school teaching. Many of his students come back to thank him for the support they received while at Rutgers.  His own chair remembers the first time he heard a student wandering in the office asking for Dr. G. “Who is this rap artist or hip-hop star they call Dr. G? Who is this masked man?” he thought. It was none other than Gillespie himself.  That private name “Dr. G” suggests that he is not only a great teacher and mentor, but he goes further to develop supportive advising relations, the kind of professional intimacy that stays with students for a long time, and keeps them coming back to their alma mater.

Alongside his varied and rich teaching portfolio, Professor Gilllespie has developed a passion that seems to stand out, teaching his class “Folk Festival Management.” Here he works closely to produce the New Jersey Folk Festival, a major contribution to the University and the State. The NJFF is the largest student-run multi-arts folk festival in North America. “Sometimes on a shoe-string” as he puts it, and now for 35 years, the Folk Festival has thrived under his watchful leadership, bringing together local, national and international artists and scholars of folk art and culture. This is an event that brings enormous pride and reputation to Rutgers—and it is fair to say that Dr. G has been a pioneer in this respect.

Because of her creative course designs, Emily Bartels’s Shakespeare courses are nationally known.  Using innovative teaching strategies – such as electronic exchanges with rural high school students; performances, films and videos; creative final project assignments; and strategic methods for teaching revision – she makes her subject matter vivid, enjoyable, and current, while maintaining unusually rigorous standards for student work.

She teaches with equal agility in large lecture classes and small seminars. And she has generously taught in venues far beyond her normal load:  offering master classes on teaching, organizing special sessions for undergraduates who are applying to graduate school, and teaching at Robert Wood Johnson.  

She is a powerful teacher of other teachers, working through the Rutgers High School Teachers Institute and through consultancies and faculty advisorships for NEH-funded projects having to do with the interaction between universities and secondary schools.  Finally, as Associate Director of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, she carries Rutgers’ excellence in teaching far and wide.

A typical comment from one of her student evaluations sums it all up “she’s THE BEST!”

Jan Mohlman, Assistant Professor of Psychology, has an outstanding commitment to undergraduate teaching and exemplifies a passion for infusing scientific scholarship into teaching.  Her lecture and laboratory course offerings weave connections between psychology research and practice.  She is a master of teaching very large classes and makes a class of 400 students into an engaging experience for each student in the room.  Both her students and her faculty colleagues rave about her teaching abilities.

A letter of endorsement singed by approximately 200 of the students in her spring 2008 Abnormal Psychology class provides a fitting tribute.  It says in part, ”Her goal was to make this class a personalized experience for us, despite the fact that there were over 400 students enrolled in the class!  This is an ability that cannot be faked!”

Florence Quideau is an outstanding graduate student in Art History, currently a Bevier fellow and the recipient of a Mellon dissertation fellowship for 2009-10.  French by birth, Florence already has a reputation as an exceptional teacher at Rutgers: her learnedness is laced with a Gallic humor that the students cherish; her lectures are commanding, yet accessible; her warmth towards the students is always palpable.  Her classes are full the instant they are listed.   

Our undergraduates have directly benefited from Florence’s dissertation research on French 19th-century sculpture, specifically on Daumier.  Simultaneously with the exhibition, Honoré Daumier and La Maison Aubert: Politics and Social Satire in Paris, she guest-curated as a G.A. at the Zimmerli in 2007-08, she offered a junior/senior art history majors seminar on Daumier.  Students in the Daumier Seminar welcomed the opportunity for hands-on learning in working directly with objects, and in the following semester, were also offered the chance to present their research projects in a symposium Florence organized.  In tandem with the Zimmerli show and for the community at large, she programmed teacher workshops, tours and activities for K-12 students.  Florence also excels in front of a large lecture course, and a sampling of her stellar evaluations from our core 300-level Realism, reveals warm compliments for the “awesome class”, and for its instructor: one student confessed, “I don’t know which I liked more—Professor Quideau or the class.”  

Florence’s role as program assistant was critical to the success of Art History’s Paris program last summer.  For this on-site course, she both provided logistical support and taught two of the classes.  One dazzling lecture on the Paris Opera was delivered amidst the construction site in front of the building, and despite the noise and confusion, the students’ attention was riveted on her.  Responsible for the collective enthusiasm driving the program forward, Florence dealt with the personal crises of students wisely, generously and with the good humor that buoyed everyone up when spirits flagged in the heat, lines, and crowds.  Her success was such that the department has unusually promoted her from program assistant to co-instructor this coming summer.  

In sum, Florence is a terrific teacher, an unusually talented mentor, and a superb scholar who has contributed immensely to the education of our undergraduates in SAS.

From his very first semester as a TA, Mohannad has received outstanding student teaching evaluations. His students routinely describe him as “great”, “awesome”, or “the best TA I ever had.” Over and over again, students single out four aspects of Mohannad’s teaching for great praise:

In the words of some of his students from organic chemistry recitations in summer 2007:

 “He made me want to understand and learn to apply the material versus just memorization.”
“He was helpful and genuinely wanted us all to succeed. Taught me to not to memorize, but to understand.”
“Mohannad has a gift for teaching students. He knows how to bring Organic Chemistry down to the level of people who struggle with its concepts.”
“Mohannad was an extremely good TA. He was able to explain everything in an understandable way, which made difficult concepts much less complex.”

Mohannad also has won high praise from every faculty member with whom he has worked. To quote just one comment from a senior organic chemistry professor: “I have no hesitation in giving Mohanned Abdo my highest recommendation. I don’t believe I have ever encountered a more skilled, committed teaching assistant in more than 40 years of teaching.”

Andrew Baxter came to Rutgers from Millersville University in 2005, and has served the Mathematics Department as a teaching assistant, lecturer, as Head TA for Maple Instruction, Head TA for Calculus Workshops, and assistant for Summer Instructional Control, making extensive use of both his technical expertise and his gifts as a teacher. Andrew is now a fellow of the CASTL program, an initiative by the Carnegie Foundation aiming to broaden the reach and depth of the scholarship of teaching and learning.    

Already as an undergraduate at Millersville Andrew was active as a tutor and Teaching Assistant, and co-authored a book on mathematical ideas for nonscience majors. At Rutgers Andrew has been actively involved with developing and supporting several of the more innovative modes of instruction used by the  Department. He took a very active role in the adaptation of materials used in the third semester calculus course making use of the mathematical software package Maple, working with Lara Pudwell and Steve Greenfield, and they will publish a joint paper on the subject of Maple instruction in multivariable calculus in the near future.  Andrew also provided support to other teaching assistants on the use of calculus workshops, and he has participated in the department’s program of observation and advice to graduate students with summer teaching assignments.  The combination of his own strength in the classroom, together with his exceptional technical skills and outstanding ability to work effectively with his peers, has been a major asset to our instructional program.  

Andrew has also taught the course Math for Liberal Arts twice in the summer  session. This is a delicate assignment, and something of a challenge for the new instructor, as the course is very different from anything our graduate students would normally have encountered as math majors. Andrew subsequently gave a lecture in the graduate student seminar entitled “What I learned in  Math 103”.  We are not sure what he said, but there is much to be learned about the communication of mathematics by teaching that course.  It’s evident that Andrew’s students learned something as well, and enjoyed doing so. To quote a selection of comments from his third semester calculus recitations:   

Lew Hirsch received his doctorate from Penn State University in 1978 and came to Rutgers in 1979, first working with the Department of Academic Foundations at Livingston, and since 1982 in the Department  of Mathematics. Lew’s educational experience is unusually varied, including stints in a Philadelphia High School and the Rockview State Correctional Institution. He is intimately familiar with mathematical  curriculum as implemented at the high school level, in community colleges, and in universities. He knows where his students are coming from, and where they are going.

Lew now presides over a large and complex program of Basic Skills and Precalculus courses with some 6700 enrollments annually, hiring and supervising the staff of lecturers, coordinating all courses, and developing the curriculum. He handles very extensive student advising, and has taken on an increasingly broad range of related responsibilities, including oversight of the placement process, instructional supervision, liaison with various groups inside and outside the university, issues of transfer articulation, and assessment of the math program as a whole. Any listing of his activities in these domains can only be a small sample.  

Critical factors in all of Lew’s work - besides his boundless energy and commitment - are a rare set of skills and broad knowledge of mathematics and mathematics education. Lew is intimately familiar with the standards for high school algebra courses, but equally at ease in thinking about the intellectual demands and objectives of our Math 300 course and the courses dependent on it.  This range has made him a key figure in thinking about the consequences for the University of policy changes such as the Lampitt Bill, and about the relationship of the University to other institutions.  And this range informs all of his work for the department.   

Lew is a highly effective teacher as well as co-author of a widely used college algebra text. A sample of opinions culled from his recent teaching evaluations include :

Lew is a deeply serious man with a commitment to quality, and his sense of humor has no doubt sustained him through the years in the challenging and essential roles he has taken on, for the Mathematics Department and the University as a whole.

Gary Brill, Instructor in Psychology, is a force for positive educational growth at the university. He brings together teaching technology, high ideals for education and extensive knowledge of psychological science. He has a strong commitment to undergraduate education in and out of the classroom. Dr. Brill’s instruction is a wonderful example of the idea that the road one takes to a destination is as important as the destination. The mode of learning and learning how to learn and remember are an important part of his psychology classes, one highly acknowledged by his many students.  Dr. Brill is constantly bringing new approaches to education just as he brings in cutting edge research to the courses.

It is difficult to summarize Dr. Bill’s many contributions to the university.  He is an exceptional non-tenure track faculty member well-deserving of special acknowledgement, respect and gratitude.

Dr. Julie Rajan represents the best of Rutgers as a teacher and a scholar. Having received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Rutgers in 2005, she has wielded her knowledge of national liberation movements, writings of resistance, and South Asian women to develop courses that both engage and challenge undergraduate students in Women’s and Gender Studies. While pursuing an impressive scholarly agenda—Dr. Rajan has published a monograph and four edited collections—she has taught six separate WGS courses and directed four independent studies since 2005. In all of these endeavors, she has demonstrated a deep commitment to sustaining intellectual rigor, interdisciplinary perspectives, and a stimulating learning environment.

The range of courses that Dr. Rajan has taught is truly impressive. She has been an instructor for first year courses such as Dynamics of Race, Class, and Sex and more advanced courses such as Comparative Feminisms, and Gender and Human Rights.  Her syllabi reflect not only her interdisciplinary, theoretical, and thematic interests and capacities but also a deep understanding of the position of each course in relation to the overall curriculum.

Students respond to Dr. Rajan’s courses with unbridled enthusiasm, taking on the hard work of reading, writing, discussion and analysis she demands to reap the intellectual rewards she offers. Motivated by her intelligence, her interest, and her accessibility, students regularly proclaim how much they learn in her courses.  Not only does she achieve key pedagogical goals in the classroom--critical thinking, clear writing, lucid oral presentations, and thoughtful discussion and debate—but she changes the way students approach the larger world. Time and again students noted that they carried material and perspectives learned in Dr. Rajan’s courses into other classes and into the ways they analyzed political and social issues more generally.

This is the best that we can hope for as teachers: to introduce undergraduates to new material, new perspectives, and new ways of thinking about their lives and the world around them, and to have them carry that knowledge beyond the classroom and into their daily lives and their future careers. For a non-tenure track faculty member to have this impact on Rutgers students is a testimony to Dr. Rajan’s exceptional pedagogical skills as well as her deep commitment to undergraduate education.