Distinguished Teacher: June Lowenberg challenges students' hearts, along with minds

June Lowenberg

When you take a course on death, or one on race, class and gender in American society from Dr. June Lowenberg, be prepared to laugh, cry, and do a whole lot of thinking.

Lowenberg is a senior lecturer in the nursing program at UW Tacoma, where her classes in Death and American Society, race, class, and gender, and health promotion are always packed.

Her students find her both passionate and compassionate, a scholar excited about sharing her academic expertise (her fields include family health and the social construction of health and illness), but also a human being who understands the personal concerns of her students.

"My teaching philosophy involves creating an environment that facilitates critical thinking, the acquisition of substantive content and skills, and awareness and self-insight," she said.

But what she really does is create a classroom environment where students are willing to share their feelings about many of the taboo subjects in society—death, illness, and both personal and institutionalized prejudice.

"We actually do a lot of laughing together," Lowenberg says. "But there is also some crying, some anger, and, I hope, a lot of introspection by the students as they analyze their own attitudes towards these really sensitive topics."

In her course on death she has her students do activities like prepare their own eulogies and interview chaplains and others whose work routinely includes confronting death and grief.

"But there are always a few people who grapple with very personal issues, death and grief issues, sometimes from long ago," she adds. "I need to be open and available."

Students who nominated her for UWT's 1998 Distinguished Teaching Award had high praise for the personal warmth with which she invites them to wrestle with difficult ideas.

"June has a unique way of integrating matters of the head with matters of the heart," wrote one UWT student.

Lowenberg explains that students who take her classes are required to stretch themselves—and not just intellectually.

"While students in these classes need to learn a great deal of theoretical and conceptual knowledge, they also have to gain self-insight and sensitivity to their own fears and to those of others. They must really grow in a more total way than in many other courses."

She points out that the nurses she teaches will have to care for people in their most intimate and vulnerable moments. Lowenberg tries to ensure that the caregivers she is preparing have had a chance to confront their prejudices in class, so that they don't have to do it on the job.

She loves the interdisciplinary nature of UWT's approach to higher education. In fact, she says she chose nursing in the first place because it was one of the few fields in which she could combine the humane with the scientific: she knew she loved working with people, but she also loved the biological and social sciences.

Lowenberg earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, San Diego, an M.N. in pediatric nursing from UCLA, and a B.S. in nursing from the University of California, San Francisco.

As someone who returned for her doctorate in her mid-30s, and with a young son, she can understand the problems facing the mature students who comprise much of UWT's student body.

"One of the enjoyable things about teaching adult learners is that they know what they want and are hungry for knowledge," she said.

UWT Dean and Vice Provost Vicky Carwein, herself a nurse, praises Lowenberg for her charismatic teaching skills, as well as for her research and encouragement of lifelong learning in her students.

"June has touched the lives of hundreds of students, the faculty and staff here at UWT, as well as at other universities and organizations," said Dean Carwein.

Like many people of remarkable skill and talent, though, Lowenberg remains humble about her recognition.

"So many of my colleagues at UWT are fine, even exemplary, teachers that I consider this award a great honor," she said. "I not only continue to learn from my students, but from my colleagues as well." ¶

Jamie Martin-Almy, UW Tacoma