Four Faculty Receive the Division of Social Sciences Distinguished Teaching & Service Awards

By Genevieve Shiffrar

February 22, 2002

The Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters & Science is home to 12 departments with over 1000 graduate students, 6,800 undergraduates, and 271 ladder-rank faculty. These professors comprise 20% of Berkeley's faculty. In keeping with Cal's reputation as the world's leading public university, they are some of the best scholars, scientists, and teachers working today.

Those faculty members who received the 2001-2002 Division of Social Sciences Distinguished Teaching and Service Awards are extraordinarily committed, effective, and inspiring professors. Dean George Breslauer is delighted to honor Professor of History Robin Einhorn, Professor of Psychology Stephen Hinshaw, and Professor of Sociology Arlene Hochschild with the Social Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award. He also honors Professor of Linguistics Eve Sweetser with the Social Sciences Distinguished Service Award. Each award comes with an honorarium of $3,000.

In their own ways, the three recipients of the teaching award created unforgettable learning experiences.

Professor Robin Einhorn captivates students with her enthusiasm for history. Year after year, she combines her intense narrative style with an uncanny ability to make intricate material easy to understand. Together, these skills create an electric atmosphere in the classroom. Students in her large introductory classes often will take multiple classes from her and many intend to become history majors as well. It is not only in the large lecture halls that Professor Einhorn's enthusiasm for history shines. She serves as advisor to a steady stream of successful graduate students and has transformed the first half of the introductory graduate seminar in U.S. history. She has reached out to high school teachers of history through the California History-Social Science Project, and has served on the Academic Senate's Committee on Courses of Instruction.

Professor Stephen Hinshaw succeeds wonderfully in teaching clinical psychology in many different realms. He has taught three large lecture coures: Psychology 100B (Theory and Research in Psychology), Psychology 130 (Clinical Psychology), and Psychology 131 (Developmental Psychology), which he initiated. He also developed a small, focused seminar, Psychology 24 (Narrative Accounts of Mental Illness). He has taught six different graduate courses in the past few years. In all these courses, Dr. Hinshaw is lauded by students for his encyclopedic knowledge and his attention to the importance of writing skills and critical thinking. He organizes a summer camp for children with ADHD in which undergraduate students serve as counselors and gain valuable research experience. In addition, Professor Hinshaw has served as head of the Clinical Area in the Psychology Department and Director of the Psychology Clinic for the past three years and is very active in mentoring and advising graduate students.

Professor of Sociology Arlene Hochschild can infuse a classroom of 100 students with such intimacy and sympathetic support that "the shyest of students finds their courage" according to former students of her "Sociology of the Family" course. The care with which she teaches in the classroom extends to her office as well. Dr. Hochschild is known for allocating an unusually generous amount of time for office hours, during which she often develops bonds with individual students. Professor Hochschild's dedication to her students is even more extraordinary in light of her reputation as one of the most distinguished sociologists in the country. For many graduate students, the generosity of her spirit and the strength of her scholarship make Dr. Hochschild an extraordinarily effective advisor.

Professor of Linguistics Eve Sweetser received the Division of Social Sciences Distinguished Service Award for her dedicated efforts to strengthen both her department and the University. She has served on every major committee of the Linguistics Department and has been especially effective as chair of the department's Undergraduate Studies Committee and as an undergraduate advisor. Her service to the University has been even more impressive. She was a founder of the Celtic Studies Program and is heavily involved in the Cognitive Science major program, of which she is currently the Director. Additionally, she has served on the Divisional Council, the L&S Executive Committee, the Academic Planning Board, the Academic Programs Subcommittee of the Academic Planning Board, and the L&S Languages Committee, and has served as a Berkeley representative in the Systemwide Academic Assembly. In addition to these extensive efforts, Dr. Sweetser is a world-class scholar in cognitive linguistics and regularly teaches more than her share of classes.

These four exceptional faculty members have given of themselves in extraordinary ways to the benefit of everyone in the university community. Please join Dean Breslauer in congratulating them for receiving the Distinguished Teaching and Service Awards of the Division of Social Sciences.