Bringing home the Brotman

Three units each win $15,000 and the University’s first set of awards for working together The Brotman Award is different. It doesn’t just celebrate one stellar lecturer, researcher or mentor but all of them working together.

Named after UW Regent Jeffrey Brotman and his wife, Susan, the new award recognizes collaboration within and among departments, programs and groups to improve the quality of undergraduate education.

Computer Science Professor John Zahorjan, standing center, works with his Capstone Design class

The Brotmans launched the award with $250,000. As many as three units can win each year. This year’s three winners are the Community and Environmental Program and the geography and computer science and engineering departments.

Each unit gets $15,000 in unrestricted funds. Units are restricted to one Brotman Award in a five-year period.

The award is one of the first in the country to reward faculty for working together, said Loveday Conquest, director the Teaching Academy, which helped select this year’s winners.

COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING PROGRAM
The Community and Environmental Planning Program isn’t training professionals. It’s making citizens, said program chair Dennis Ryan.

Community and Environmental Planning Program teaching assistant Eric Stineman, right center, leads a student discussion in a social stuctures and processes class.

Started in 1994, the major was developed by and for students. The now 64 majors create their own two-year, 90-credit plans of study, govern themselves—and even help decide which students get admitted to the program. Students also are divided into four groups and required to take one seminar class each quarter with their group where they learn from and teach each other for two years.

From the whole experience, students learn to be part of big and small groups, set agendas, hold discussions, be leaders and, most importantly, be responsible. And with such a set up, majors can live what they learn and don’t wait until graduation to test their skills, Ryan said. They also are required to do at least one field experience, but many do two. Through the program students have no choice but to become aware of the process of effective decision making and consensus building, he said. They can make mistakes and alter their approaches in the safety of peers and professors who understand.

Students come to the Community and Environmental Planning Program with various backgrounds and goals. Some want to be community planners. Others want to pair their training with communications, geography, business or art.

Ryan said how the $15,000 Brotman Award will be spent is still undecided, but some early suggestions have emerged: initiate a field studies program to fund senior projects on a competitive proposal basis; initiate a fellows program to attract new faculty and community leaders to teach and to coach in the program; initiate a best practices review to conduct biennial program reviews that engage the entire major in critique and assessment make sure the program continues to evolve and stay fresh.

GEOGRAPHY
More than a decade ago, geography faculty saw an opportunity to change how they served their undergrads and they embraced it. With student surveys in hand and a fleet of new faculty members, they created a program that has since doubled in size.

Geography Prof. J.W. Harrington, standing, works in the Collaboratory with students in GEO 495.

In the revamp, faculty decided to make the department more student-centered—they wanted students to be more responsible for their own learning, yet still provide for them a strong backbone of support. What that has meant is pairing faculty mentors with majors to map out the path of classes and skills needed to get students the careers they want. To get some ideas about their career options, students hear from each faculty member in the department about their work and research, and internships and career opportunity lists are circulated continually. Another vital part of the program is service learning, an experience in the community that is brought back into the classroom and juxtaposed with intellectual theory.

Geography students know more than simply state capitals and country locations.

Some of the central themes in the department are social and environmental justice and the relationship of globalization, migration and citizenship. With this focus, students emerge ready to be complete social scientists who can address and analyze the social, environmental, political and economic questions of today, said Vicky Lawson, chair of geography.

The department’s 15 faculty members also have launched their own discussion group about what they want students to know by the end of their classes. The result: cleaner syllabi, clearer assignments and a better message to students about what they’re learning.

The $15,000 Brotman money will start an endowment fund for the department. With visions of alumni donations to add to the pot of money, Lawson said the department will use the money to support undergraduate scholarships and research with faculty, send students to conferences and meetings, and pay for such items as Phi Beta Kappa dues for students who are accepted as ways to reward them.

COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
Computer Science and Engineering, one of the University’s top graduate and research departments, has been an active leader in undergraduate education as well.

“Capstone design courses” are one of many distinctive features of the department’s two undergraduate major programs. In these courses, teams of students complete their undergraduate studies by tackling significant design and implementation challenges under the guidance of faculty and outside professionals, in areas such as computer animation, mobile computing and distributed video games. Undergraduates also become closely involved with faculty and graduate students by serving as teaching assistants and as research assistants.

“Our philosophy is that universities are, first and foremost, educational institutions, and that research universities can provide a unique type of undergraduate education,” said department chair Ed Lazowska. “If we’re not striving to seamlessly integrate research and education, we’re screwing up.”

Computer Science and Engineering also has been a leader in the use of educational technology to reach on-campus students, off-campus students, and the technical community in the Puget Sound region.

The department will use the $15,000 Brotman Award to build the endowment of an undergraduate scholarship commemorating Dreama Frost, a 27-year-old member of the department’s advising staff who passed away last December. ¶