A core mission of the Society since 1949 has been to recognize and shine a light on great undergraduate teaching at Columbia College and Columbia Engineering through our annual Great Teacher Awards. This years honorees were Professor of Music, Historical Musicology, and Vice Chair and former Chair of the Department of Music, Giuseppe Gerbino; and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and former Vice Dean of Undergraduate Programs, Barclay Morrison.
Our objective of improving the quality of the venue were realized in 2019. Thanks to the cooperation of both school’s Deans and their events teams, we were offered a new and more fitting venue for our event: the third floor lecture room in Pulitzer Hall. This more spacious, air conditioned room, with floor to ceiling windows on three sides overlooking the South Quad enables seating at tables for all of the attendees. As Dean Valentini noted in his remarks at our event, “This event is the highlight of Reunion Weekend…acknowledging faculty who have made enormous contributions…It is appropriate we have this event in this room..surrounded by these windows…which look to the sky. Its a very aspirational space which looks to the future…which is symbolic of the significance of the awards being made today. As faculty we aim to influence the future… via the scholarship we carry out…but also through the students we teach. The influence we faculty have in both those is enormous… and I think it is valuable and important that the Society of Columbia Graduates recognizes faculty for their contribution to the second part of that …and is also looking to the future”.
Additionally, we achieved one of our enhanced communications objectives by having the event video-recorded as well as professionally photographed, with both video and photos available for viewing online by our members, by the broader Columbia community, and by the general public. The video of the full 2019 Great Teacher Awards event may be viewed online by clicking this link:
The photos from the 2019 Great Teacher Awards event may be viewed as a slideshow online by clicking here.