In the fall, Eric Eisenstein, doctoral student in marketing and the President of GSAC, proposed to University President Judith Rodin the creation of a new University-wide award to honor teaching by graduate students. President Rodin responded by agreeing to personally fund ten awards this year. "Through our graduate students, we are creating the academic community of tomorrow," President Rodin said. "Acknowledging extraordinary teaching is a natural and important way to engage and entice our graduate students to strive for excellence."

An award selection committee consisting of faculty and students from multiple schools solicited nominations from undergraduates through e-mail, the DP and a new web page. More than 230 nominations were received recommending more than 130 graduate students. Thirty-three of the top candidates were invited to submit a statement of their teaching philosophy and a letter of support from a faculty member who had supervised their teaching. From those, ten were chosen as this year's awardees:

Aaron Bloomfield, Computer and Information Science
Christopher Burrows, Mathematics
Jeffrey Casello, Systems Engineering
Gregory Flaxman, Comparative Literature and Theory
Tamar Kaplan, History
Eric Kondratieff, Ancient History
Jason Parsley, Mathematics
Stacey Philbrick, Political Science
Edward Weinstein, Pharmacological Sciences
Gordon Wong, Chemical Engineering

Dr. Walter Licht, who chaired the selection committee said, "It was exciting to see the response from the undergraduate community and to read the inspiring statements by the graduate students. It was very difficult to narrow the field to ten. We are delighted to have this opportunity to honor some of the University's most outstanding graduate student teachers and to publicly recognize the valuable contributions these budding scholars make to our undergraduate programs." The ten awardees were honored by a reception last Thursday.