You'll
find teachers and professors at UNM who dedicate their lives to your education
and success
The University of
New Mexico faculty believe that teaching and advising students is one
of life's greatest experiences. Getting to know their students and watching
them progress intellectually, and as human beings, is one of the pleasures
of teaching at UNM. Their obligation to the University is to provide the
best and most effective teaching. Their obligation to you is met through
personal interaction, answering individual questions and offering real-world
advice. They encourage this interaction by posting open office hours when
they will be available for you to stop by and chat.
| Margaret
Werner-Washburne, Biology |
Writes an undergraduate
who before taking Maggie's class had felt she would never be able to
finish her degree in biology: "Maggie taught me a great deal
about biology, but more importantly, she helped provide the tools I
will need to reach my goals. The best, most honest thing I can tell
you about Maggie is that I will aspire to be a teacher of the same quality
and enthusiasm."
Writes a graduate
student: "Maggie has a novel outlook towards teaching... We
learned how to question existing phenomena and information that we ordinarily
take for granted. To ask a good question and to be able to think your
way to the answer was the key... Even if you could not answer the question,
that you could ask it and think about it was important."
Margaret "Maggie"
Werner-Washburne began her career at UNM in 1988 as an assistant professor
of biology. She earned her BA in English from Stanford, her MS in botany
from the University of Hawaii, and her PhD in botany and biochemistry
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1990 she received one of
only 200 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator
awards. Now an associate professor, she has brought in more than $1
million in research grants to UNM; many of those who help her with her
research are minority students.
Werner-Washburne's
success in research as well as in teaching derives from her unorthodox
perspective that science needs more unorthodox perspectives. "We
don't need 10,000 people who see the world in the same way," says
Werner-Washburne. "They will only find one answer, and we are likely
to need 10,000 answers. "Coming from "different backgrounds
and pathways," we reach different conclusions, she says.
"I had
heard horror stories about organic chemistry," writes student
Mark Napier. "I dreaded taking this course. What I found in
Professor Hampton's class was not a class filled with rote memorization
and drudgery, but a dynamic course that emphasized conceptual mastery
over memorization..."
Phil Hampton has
taught chemistry at UNM since 1991. Over the past four-and-a-half years,
Hampton says his teaching style has evolved from lecture-centered to
interactive, "where the students are encouraged to think and to
ask questions in class." Hampton has introduced a "ChemBridges"
program for transfer and nontraditional students who enter UNM with
varying backgrounds. Because students often have difficulty imagining
the three-dimensional objects necessary to chemistry on a blackboard,
Hampton is also in the process of developing software to produce three-dimensional
images on transparencies for students to view with 3-D glasses.
After receiving
his bachelor's degree from St. Olaf College in 1984, Hampton earned
his PhD in chemistry from Stanford University in 1989, then served as
a postdoctoral fellow at California Institute of Technology before coming
to UNM.
| Vivian
Heyward, Physical Education |
Vivian Heyward
is tough. That's the opinion her students hold of her, and they mean
it as a compliment.
Heyward strikes
the "delicate balance between being tough enough to inspire high
achievement" and "the ability to foster confidence and self-esteem
in her students," writes one student.
Students' respect
for Heyward is returned by her respect for them. "I never worried
that the workload was too difficult because I recognized how much more
difficult my instructor's workload was," writes another student.
"Giving lengthy, practical assignments means spending many hours
grading them."
Outside of class,
students appreciate Heyward's willingness to work with them individually.
In class, they appreciate her sharing her current research projects
and findings. (Heyward is well known for her research in body composition.)
Students often aid Heyward in her research, for which they are recognized
professionally.
Heyward came to
UNM in 1974 from research and teaching at the University of Illinois,
Champaign-Urbana (where she received her PhD) and at the State University
of New York, College at Cortland (where she received her BSEd and her
MSEd.). She received the UNM Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in
1979 and the College of Education Merit III Recognition Award in 1986-87
and 1988-89. She has developed ten courses now offered in the UNM Division
of Health Promotion and Physical Education, and has recently published
a textbook, Advanced Fitness Assessment and Exercise Prescription.
Both her spirit
and her scholarship have moved her students. "I registered for
her undergraduate Milton course reluctantly, thinking only that it was
preferable to Chaucer. By the end of the semester I was a diehard fan,
not only of Milton but of the professor," writes one. "She
is genuinely interested in what they [her students] have to say, and
she has a capacity to see the potential in students' work and to make
them see it as well...," writes another. And still another:
"She encourages them [her students] to look at the subject matter
in a new way and to translate their scholarship into life experience."
You'd hardly guess
from Cheryl Fresch's official curriculum vitae the real course of her
life. You'd be hard pressed to surmise that the holder of a PhD and
MA in English Literature from Cornell University, the Miltonist, and
the associate professor of English at UNM for 21 years was reared the
daughter of a coal-miner with a sixth grade education. But from that
knowledge you can glean the spirit that must drive Cheryl Fresch. "The
experiences of my childhood," she writes, "repeatedly taught
me that education brings freedom, brings power, brings, indeed, possibility,
and still today...I find myself in front of a Milton class driven by,
possessed by the urgency of that belief. I do not teach in order to
convert students to Milton's theology or to convert them from majoring
in Business to majoring in English, but I teach rather to make them
realize the most astonishing possibilities of being human."
Dr. Fresch was
the founding sponsor of the UNM chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, an honorary
society for undergraduate students in English. She is the recipient
of a Burlington Resources Foundation Faculty Achievement Award for excellence
in teaching effectiveness. She directs the English department's undergraduate
studies. "Enthusiastic, demanding, and compassionate,"
writes yet another who has come into her sphere, "Dr. Fresch
continually offers her students an education which is exceptional by
any university's standards - and a model of scholarship and teaching
skills that is equally remarkable."
Find out more about
well-known former UNM students, as well as the alumni chapters throughout
the United States where you'll find Lobos who are anxious to talk to
you about what it is like to attend UNM.
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