The Distinguished Teaching Awards are given to University faculty who show a mastery of their subject matter, intellectual rigor, lively curiosity, a commitment to research and a passion for teaching. Awardees receive $5,000.

Bruce Kochis - Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (Bothell)

When Bruce Kochis traveled from his hometown of Longview to start his freshman year at the UW in 1966, he brought with him scholarships that would have steered him toward medicine. But Kochis arrived to find a campus teeming with intellectual excitement, where the potent issues of the time were being debated in classes. Before long he knew two things — that social justice would be the consuming passion of his life, and that the best way to promote social justice was through education. It's not surprising, then, that he decided to become a teacher, specifically, a teacher at the college level.

Bruce Kochis

"I think the classroom is one of the most important places in society and one of the most exciting ones too," Kochis says. "In the long run I think we can do the most good through education, though I don't think I'm a Polyanna about that."

Given his enthusiasm for the classroom, it's no wonder that Kochis is one of the most popular teachers at the UW Bothell, where he is a senior lecturer specializing in courses on human rights. A colleague there, Bob Schultz, remembers a student praising another teacher, saying "Professor X is one of the best teachers I've had on the Bothell campus — he's almost as good as Kochis!"

But Schultz notes that Kochis is demanding as well as likable. Observing him in action, Schultz saw a teacher who, while never putting down a student's contribution, still "insisted on clear and well-informed responses" and "moved the argument forward at a rigorous pace."

To Kochis, this is what a classroom should be. He seldom lectures, preferring instead to "open up students' ways of thinking so that they make intellectual discoveries on their own."

To that end he assigns lots of writing, forcing his students to articulate their thoughts first and then examine and critique them. He also requires all his students to go out into the world — for example, to attend a human rights event or interview a human rights activist of their choosing. But he isn't trying to recruit volunteers to a cause. "The classroom has to be a free and open place of inquiry," he says, "not a place for trying to convert people."

It was his own openness to new ideas that started Kochis down his current path. At the UW, he majored in Slavic Languages and Literature because the Cold War was raging and that was the part of the world Americans "hated most but understood least." He wanted to correct that imbalance. He continued in Slavic studies at the University of Michigan, where he earned his doctorate, then taught at the University of Nebraska and at Seattle community colleges before coming to UW Bothell full time in 1996.

But he didn't leave the social activism of his college days behind. He volunteered for a number of causes on his own time, and simultaneously began to look at human rights as a subject to study as well as a cause to fight for. Then, when he joined the UW Bothell, he learned that several courses in that field were already being offered. Kochis leapt at the chance to teach them It was, he says, the perfect opportunity to bring the two strands of his life together.

Since then, with the help of Tools for Transformation funds, he's founded the UW Human Rights Education and Research Network. The network promotes the integration of human rights scholarship and teaching at all three UW campuses. Six courses are already being offered in the field, and interested scholars are working on creating a minor.

All of which only adds to Kochis' satisfaction with teaching. "I love watching students make human connections around these concepts, then build their own groups so they can go forth and do good things," he says. "I can't imagine any work that's better."

Nancy Wick, University Week

Distinguished Teaching Awards: Gerald Baldasty - Communications Guozhong Cao - Materials Science and Engineering Stanley Chernicoff - Geology Stephen Gloyd - Health Services Julie Nicoletta - Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (Tacoma) Robin Wright - Zoology