{"id":132328,"date":"2020-04-17T11:50:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T15:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=132328"},"modified":"2020-04-17T16:03:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T20:03:57","slug":"jennifer-koviach-cote-and-joshua-rubin-share-2020-kroepsch-teaching-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/04\/17\/jennifer-koviach-cote-and-joshua-rubin-share-2020-kroepsch-teaching-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9 and Joshua Rubin share 2020 Kroepsch teaching award"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Two Bates professors share the 2020 Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Those professors\u2019 students make it easy to see why both received the college\u2019s highest teaching honor.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cHe is the professor who has had the single largest impact on the way I view the world,\u201d Morgan Baxter \u201920 of Irvine, Calif., says of Joshua Rubin, lecturer in anthropology.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cJen is exactly what I came to Bates for,\u201d says Cara Starnbach \u201919, describing Jennifer Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9, an expert in carbohydrate chemistry who works on synthesizing molecules related to muscular dystrophy and to fighting a virus that causes illness in infants, has long taught the sequence of organic chemistry courses that most Bates natural science majors take, as well as upper-level courses.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\"Anthropology<\/a>

Lecturer in Anthropology Joshua Rubin is a winner of the 2020 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. (Samuel Mironko ’21\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\r\n

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Rubin studies the often-very-serious effects of sport and play in society: What happens when one person frames an action, perhaps a violent one, as part of a sport, but their opponent does not? What if each has a different political affiliation, and there\u2019s a power imbalance? Rubin teaches courses across the academic levels, including the popular \u201cArt, Power, and Politics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Ky Jenkins \u201922 of Potomac, Md., is currently taking that class. He says Rubin has a talent for making students question the roles and values they assign to objects and each other, while validating students\u2019 own ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cHe\u2019s created a classroom environment where I am not afraid to share my ideas and what I think about the reading or the things he\u2019s saying,\u201d Jenkins says.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Starnbach says that through Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9, she developed a strong foundation in chemistry and the confidence to make it her career. She now works at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, developing cancer-fighting drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\"Associate<\/a>

Associate Professor Chemistry and Biochemistry Jennifer Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9 is a winner of the 2020 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\r\n

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Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9 \u2014 who persuaded Starnbach to become a chemistry major \u2014 exemplifies the strong teaching that made her experience at Bates exceptional, Starnbach says.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve seen her give talks and the relationships she has in the field,\u201d she says. \u201cShe is respected, and then she takes such pride in teaching undergraduates. She has made it her life\u2019s work to nurture learning at that level and give us good research experiences. I\u2019ve benefited from all of those things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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We talked with Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9 and Rubin about their roles as teachers, how they\u2019re making things work remotely, and the most rewarding aspects of teaching at Bates.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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What, to you, is teaching? Is it just what happens in the classroom, or is it more than that?<\/h5>\r\n

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Rubin<\/strong>: Teaching is helping someone to see the world just a little bit differently and providing them with the tools to understand what they\u2019re seeing. It\u2019s about encouraging students to recognize that there are other ways of thinking and other ways of acting in the world beyond the ones they encounter most often.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Teaching is getting students to that realization and then showing them what they can do once they\u2019ve reached it \u2014 the possibilities for critique, social action, and emancipation that open up with new perspectives. One lecture won\u2019t do that, nor one discussion.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9<\/strong>: Teaching is not simply the transfer of information. For me, it involves getting to know students on a personal level \u2014 understanding the way they think, understanding the way they approach problems, helping them to think about problems from a different perspective, using a method they may not have thought about before.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Mara Stolzenbach ’20 of Los Angeles talks about her honors thesis adviser, Joshua Rubin, lecturer in anthropology and co-winner of the 2020 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n