Social Sciences: Distinguished Teaching and Distinguished Service Awards

Doe Library

2020 - 2021 Awardees:

Distinguished Teaching Award: Laleh Behbehanian, Sociology

Distinguished Service Award: Belén Flores, Linguistics

2019 - 2020 Awardees:

Distinguished Service Awards:

Joan Kask, Awardee

Joan Kask, IAS

"I was astonished to get the award because I know so very many other staff who have contributed so much to service in the division and on the campus. None of us work in a vacuum – no matter how much it may have felt so in this year of isolation – so this award is for all my peers who have worked so hard and with such dedication."

Kim Voss, Awardee

Kim Voss, Sociology

"I have come to see that one of the most significant ways I can help to make the world a better place is to refuse to cede the best education and research to the private sphere. Instead, it has become deeply meaningful to me to make Berkeley the university that provides the world’s best education, both to the children of janitors and home health care workers and to children from more elite families. It has also become profoundly important to me to help ensure that Berkeley remains the place where scholars produce the research needed to create a more just, equal, and sustainable world."

Distinguished Teaching Awards:

Ozlem Ayduk, Awardee

Ozlem Ayduk, Psychology

"When I first started teaching at Berkeley 19 years ago, the possibility of me receiving this award, or any teaching award for that matter, looked like a long shot. I wasn’t a bad teacher, I was perfectly alright but, given the extraordinary number of gifted teachers we have on this campus, I did not see myself as a candidate that had that special humph. Therefore, having been judged worthy of this award means a lot; it's both gratifying and verifying to know that I have become a better teacher with effort, time, and experience."

Keith Feldman, Awardee

Keith Feldman, Ethnic Studies

"…being part of an active community of educators is what's made the work at all possible. Team teaching with colleagues in and beyond my department, guest lectures from colleagues near and far, graduate student instructors with immense creativity and compassion, campus units like the AC center and Digital Learning Services and the Libraries, the center for teaching and learning, the Social Science Division's own grad fellows, and the seemingly endless engine of ideas and troubling shooting that is the teach-net listserv. These are what's made finding new rhythms, creating new spaces and times together imaginable. But more than anything, it's been the students who've showed up however they could to craft their own rhythm, to make space otherwise, to show us how to make a meaningful education."

Previous Awardees:

2018 – 2019

With the upheaval and challenges our faculty are facing due to COVID-19, in April 2020, Dean Ray took the opportunity to recognize extraordinary efforts in unprecedented times and awarded all active faculty within the Division the Distinguished Teaching and Service Award for AY 2018- 19. You can read more in this article sent out by the Social Science Matrix(link is external)(link is external).

2017 - 2018