University Times

Two English department faculty members have been named winners of the 2005 Tina and David Bellet A&S Teaching Excellence Awards.

The annual teaching awards were established in 1998 with a $200,000 donation from the Bellet family to recognize outstanding and innovative teaching in undergraduate Arts and Sciences (A&S). This year, the Bellet family donated an additional $100,000 to augment the awards.

A committee appointed by the A&S associate dean for Undergraduate Studies awards winning faculty a cash prize and financial support for ongoing teaching activities. Faculty who have taught in A&S over the past three years are eligible. The committee evaluates teaching skills as evidenced by student-teaching and peer evaluations, student testimonials and dossiers submitted by nominees.

Each award recipient will receive a cash prize of $2,000 and a grant of $3,000 in support of his or her teaching.

This year’s winners are: H. David Brumble and Sharon F. McDermott.

• Brumble, who has been teaching at Pitt since 1970, is a 1987 winner of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Named full professor in 1988, he has served as associate dean for undergraduate education (1996-1998); twice as academic dean for Semester at Sea voyages (1992 and 1989); interim director of the University Library System (1988-1989) and director and associate director of the composition program (1979-1981).

Currently, he serves on the English department’s literature curriculum committee.

Brumble’s main teaching interests are late-Medieval and Renaissance literature. But over his career, he has taught a wide variety of undergraduate courses, including: American Indian Literature, Shakespeare, Advanced Shakespeare, The Bible as Literature, Spenser, Introduction to the English Language, Chaucer, Allegory and Iconography, Journal/Travel Writing, Allegory and Warrior Culture Narratives.

“I continue to enjoy teaching — as much as I did 35 years ago,” he told the University Times. “I encourage my students to leave their own prejudices and cultural assumptions behind as they read literature. I also encourage them to imagine themselves in the minds of people in other cultures, other times.”

A committed internationalist, Brumble has lived and traveled for a total of four years in 35 countries. “I’ve done a lot of committee work for study abroad, including chairing the Semester at Sea faculty advisory committee, the international service learning advisory committee and the study abroad committee. I have taken students to 28 countries, mostly in the developing world.”

Student supporting materials for Brumble’s nomination called him a life-changing influence. “I realized that I wanted to spend my life doing what professors did,” said undergraduate Russel K. Durst. “Dave Brumble gave me that opportunity, letting me see up close the life of an academic. He allowed me to watch a truly great teacher in action, and inspired me to want to be the kind of teacher who inspires others.”

Although his plans for the prize money aren’t completed, Brumble said he needed training in the use of certain instructional software. “Also, I’m hoping that I might be able to spend some time with the Piraha Indians, way past where the roads end in the Amazon.”

• McDermott first came to Pitt in 1991, earning her M.F.A. in poetry here in 1994. She has been a visiting lecturer in the English department since 2000.

In the years between 1994 and 2000, McDermott worked as an arts administrator at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and later as the administrator at Pitt for the Western PA Writing Project. “But I missed teaching so much that I quit being an administrator to return to the classroom,” she said. McDermott caught the teaching bug while a teaching assistant in the M.F.A. program.

“Teaching is a dynamic partnership between students and teacher,” she said. “It’s this vital flow of ideas, inspiration and discovery that keeps me excited about teaching year after year. How can you not love a job that allows you to see a light turn on, a passion discovered by a student in a creative writing classroom?”

In support of her nomination, her student Patrick Manning wrote: “On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from noon to one o’clock, I was a poet. The Introduction to Poetry course with Ms. Sharon McDermott not only transformed me as a writer, but it transformed me as a student and thinker.”

Since 1980, McDermott has been publishing her poetry in numerous literary journals including Prairie Schooner, The Seneca Review, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Pearl, The Louisville Review, The New Laurel Review, West Branch, Zone 3, Home Planet News, Santa Clara Review, The Oregon Review and Slipstream.

She also has published a chapbook of poetry titled “Voluptuous,” and has another chapbook forthcoming in September. Her poetry garnered a nomination for a 2004 Pushcart Prize.

She said teaching also informs her own writing. “I believe that the students’ own sense of idealism, discovery and excitement, as they write their own poems, continuously inspires me to push myself as a writer, too.”

At the practical level in her courses, McDermott urges students to think critically about poetry texts, and to write with care and attention. “I want my students to realize that all art demands discipline, structure and craft — every word matters! I want to teach them as much as I can about the craft and discipline, and encourage them as much as I can to find their vision and voice in the work,” she said.

In addition to teaching, she serves as the faculty adviser for the University of Pittsburgh Poetry Club, and as a member of the curriculum committee for Pitt’s writing program. She also leads pedagogy discussion panels for the creative writing program.

Her plans for the Bellet prize money are not finalized, she said. “But I would love to begin to build an undergraduate poetry library with subscriptions to literary magazines and many, many collections of poetry. I’m not sure where I could house that – but that’s just a minor detail,” she joked. “I also imagine I would use some of the money to attend writers’ conferences to gather ever more useful information to share with my students.”

The Bellet award recipients will be honored at a dinner April 2 in the Schenley Ballroom of the Holiday Inn University Center. The event also will recognize Carl Bodenschatz, senior lecturer in statistics, who was a Bellet award finalist. He will receive a $250 Pitt Book Center gift certificate.

—Peter Hart