Michele Ferm had nightmares for an entire week before she started teaching her first section of German 101.
That was the fall semester of 2002, back when she tried to figure out if she could slip out of class on the first day before anyone noticed she was the instructor. That's how nervous she was.
Ferm received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year award Wednesday at the annual Teaching Awards Ceremony at the SUB. Ferm was one of six recipients selected out of the nearly 500 teaching assistants who work at UNM every year. Awards also went to Dan Breecker, Lori Ebert, Andrey Glubokov, David Weiss and Lillian Gorman.
Teachers, lecturers, adjunct faculty were recognized and Professor Christopher Mead from the School of Architecture and Planning was given the 2004-06 Presidential Teaching Fellowship.
Mead said he started at UNM with a plan to get a couple years experience and then go somewhere else. He said he remembers making the decision to stay 15 years ago, after realizing students at UNM are as good here as students are anywhere else.
"I was nominated by the students, and I was very happy with that," he said. "That would have been, by itself, a great honor."
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UNM has also given Mead the opportunity to continually experiment and rethink the courses he teaches, he said. Still, Mead said it all comes back to the students.
"In a sense this is an award to my students," he said. "I'm a good teacher because I have good students and I love teaching them."
If students learn anything from him, Mead said he hopes they learn to think for themselves.
Dominic Poteste has taken a few classes with the dance program's Mary Anne Santos Newhall. Santos Newhall won the Outstanding Adjunct Teachers/Lecturers of the Year award along with Stephen Alley and John Benavidez.
Poteste said he attended the awards ceremony because Santos Newhall is an amazing teacher who makes ideas experiential.
"As we were learning the different forms of dance as they came throughout history, we actually were required to stand up and learn the styles of the periods," he said. "She encouraged us to get up and move and experience things as a way of teaching. So, we weren't just learning and memorizing and writing things down."
Elizabeth Keefe, who won the Outstanding Teacher of the Year award, wrote in her entry essay that she always ended up teaching people somehow, no matter how hard she tried to avoid it. Eventually, she wrote, she stopped resisting. Leonard Kravitz also won the Outstanding Teacher of the Year award, and wrote in his entry that everyone is their own best teacher.
"There are lots of good teachers," Provost Brian Foster said. "And it's important to say that, because there's all kinds of talk around, as all of you know, about how research is the currency, prestige and honor in higher education. The fact is that there are an awful lot of people who are great teachers and who really believe in great teaching, and they get a lot of respect for that."
