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.
Julie Nicoletta - Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (Tacoma)
Teaching wasn't the first career choice for Julie Nicoletta, who is driven by a desire to build the public's regard for historic buildings, their architecture and their continuing importance in the life of communities.
"What I hope is that people will be more aware and ask more questions, so they can better shape decisions about what goes on around them," says Nicoletta. "If people understand the history of a place, they feel more connected to it. If not connected, they'll at least view things from a trajectory, basing decisions about the future on experiences from the past."
Julie Nicoletta
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After completing a dissertation in art history at Yale University in 1993, Nicoletta got an ideal opportunity to make a difference as an architectural historian with the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office in Carson City. But rather than making public presentations as she planned, the fast pace of development kept her behind a desk, analyzing construction plans for the historic preservation seal of approval. So, while moonlighting at the University of Nevada, Reno, as an adjunct, she began to reconsider teaching as a profession.
"I really wanted to work with the public and, originally, I didn't think I'd be able to do that as well within a typical academic institution," Nicoletta said. "What attracted me to UW Tacoma was there were already strong ties to the community and an expectation that I would be involved in the community through my teaching," she says.
She also found a high expectation to be a quality teacher. Aside from teaching through graduate school and as an adjunct, she had relatively little experience when she arrived at UWT in 1996.
"If you talked with anyone here, you'd hear I was obsessed with teaching, especially my first year. I talked about teaching all the time. I talked to people I work with about what they are doing that works and that doesn't work. I talked to students about what works and what doesn't," she says, admitting that first year she was, perhaps, a bit overly zealous.
Her husband, UWT teaching colleague Michael Kucher, helped her take some time out for fun. But the commitment to teaching remains strong.
"I will spend the rest of my career getting better at this," said Nicoletta with gusto suitable to the gritty determination of the pioneers who built Nevada's early buildings.
"Initially, when I started teaching, I wasn't sure I was good. I taught six courses the first year. Five of them were new," she says. "It took awhile to get to know the types of students we have here, they are so diverse, in age and background. I had always been at private schools with traditional-age students, most of them from privileged backgrounds," she says.
With diverse adult students, Nicoletta has realized, she has to compete with jobs, children and a myriad of other life concerns. So she has learned to be purposeful in explaining what they'll gain from working so hard to learn, and lays out in detail what's expected and when.
Just this year she decided her teaching style worked and, in hindsight, had been working — a conclusion her students and colleagues had reached years ahead of her.
"I was really honored to get this award, especially when you consider the quality of all the teachers I work with," she says.
And Nicoletta is convinced that teaching, in combination with her community activities, is an effective way to reach the public.
"It's about encouraging civic involvement, a sense of responsibility. Some go about instilling such values through civic or political science courses. I do it by teaching about history, architecture and art."
Mike Wark, UW Tacoma
University Week
The faculty and staff publication of the University of Washington
uweek@u.washington.edu
May 25, 2000