The Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence recognizes collaboration within and among departments, programs and groups to improve the quality of undergraduate education. Made possible by a donation from Jeffrey and Susan Brotman to "enhance teaching and learning," the award is administered by the UW Teaching Academy, made up of the winners of the Distinguished Teaching Award. Jeffrey Brotman is a UW law graduate and regent. Susan is a director of the UW Foundation. This year's awardees receive $17,500.

Comparative History of Ideas

It's an idea whose time has come: a program largely steered by its students (and borrowed faculty) that year after year produces inquisitive, articulate, award-winning graduates.

Such success has earned the Comparative History of Ideas (CHID) program an honor of its own — a University of Washington Brotman Award for instructional excellence.

Since its low-key origins in the 1970s, CHID has grown into one of the UW's most popular majors, an intellectual and social haven for more than 150 undergraduates.

Small group discussions are the heart of the CHID program. Taking part here are, left to right, Sabrina Sadeghi, Associate Director Jim Clowes and Stephan Stohler.

"You come to a big school like this," said one of them, senior Sabrina Sadeghi, "and it's nice to have a home."

A home, perhaps, but no sheltered hideaway for the meek. When it comes to expressing their opinions, CHID majors are known for being, well, forthright.

Michael Halleran, the divisional dean for arts and humanities, said CHID students made his Classics 322 course "among the more exciting and intellectually stimulating in my 20 years of teaching."

CHID students also increasingly venture far from "home" to study in such places as Berlin, Zimbabwe, Prague and Rome. The study trips — usually in groups of about 15 plus a faculty member — offer a lifelong bonding experience and solidify the program's unique culture, said history Professor John Toews, CHID's longtime director.

Most of all, the trips fit CHID's core intellectual theme of studying the ways in which diverse identities can be understood and interpreted, said James Clowes, the associate director.

The most ambitious such foray yet is planned for 2001-2: a three-quarter sequence that jumps from Belfast to Cape Town to Jerusalem. What better places to explore the relationship between conflict and deeply rooted political, religious and ethnic identities?

But even those CHID students who don't venture beyond the Montlake Bridge find plenty of risk and adventure in their education.

CHID's seminars, social gatherings, advising sessions and thesis groups encourage free thought and expression. And all that practice in voicing ideas may help explain majors' success in winning so many academic awards and grants, including Mellon, Javits, Fulbright and Bonderman fellowships, Dean's Medals, and more.

"They tend to do very well in interviews," Toews said. "They've done a lot of independent work, which requires people to be fairly articulate."

Toews, who is no slouch academically (he contributed some of his MacArthur Fellowship stipend in the 1980s to help fund CHID), said the sense of independence arises partly from slim resources that force the program to draw upon students, TAs and faculty temporarily recruited from throughout the university to carry a lot of the administrative and teaching load.

Indeed, Toews (rhymes with "raves") and Clowes (rhymes with "wows") have resisted proposals to form a regular academic department, preferring the flexibility to find faculty who fit shifting needs and interests.

Lately, CHID has been probing the cultural implications of new communications tools — a change comparable to the 19th century Industrial Revolution, yet whose social ramifications are little studied.

Senior Julie Renae Johnson said last spring's CHID 370, The Cultural Impact of Information Technology, changed her perspective so much that it spurred her to help research a Henry Gallery exhibition on the relationship between technology and landscape art. Now a Dean's List double major in CHID and art, Johnson won a Mary Gates Research Training Grant to pursue the Henry project.

"I have recommended CHID to several self-motivated, self-directed students, as a department that respects and fosters intellectual inquiry," she wrote in a Brotman nomination letter.

"As soon as I began taking CHID courses, my grades and performance in all my classes improved dramatically," Johnson added. "The rigor demanded by CHID creates an immense passion for taking responsibility for your own learning and education."

Three students at a recent CHID seminar displayed their independence by vigorously debating the plot of one student's play, his senior thesis. The seniors argued dramatic structure amid beige couches appearing to date from the 1970s era of CHID's birth.

Toews sees virtue in a threadbare infrastructure that allows for nimble shifts in direction. He is known around the university, in fact, for his skepticism of overly rigid strategic planning.

Yet when UW leaders undertook a campuswide conversation about the future of higher education, CHID was where they went to create a class for students to explore the modern university.

"We all talk about student-centered learning these days," said Halleran, "but for more than two decades CHID has exemplified this ideal."

Steve Goldsmith, News & Information

Brotman Awards for Instructional Excellence: Department of Technical Communication