May 6, 2004

Four receive McCormick awards

Hemke, Henschen, Macauley, Whitaker will be honored May 27

Three faculty members — Frederick Hemke, Lawrence Henschen and Melissa Macauley — have been named Charles Deering McCormick Professors of Teaching Excellence for three-year terms, beginning in the 2004-05 academic year.

Charles Whitaker has been named the Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Clinical Professor. The Disting-uished Clinical Professor serves for one year.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony May 27 in the Guild Lounge.

The McCormick awards recognize faculty “who have consistently demonstrated outstanding performance in the classroom” in the six undergraduate schools. All receive an annual salary supplement and serve as Fellows of the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence.

The endowed professorships were established in 1991 with a $10 million gift from McCormick. The award recipients are chosen from nominations of undergraduate school deans. A student-faculty committee chaired by the Provost reviews the nominations, taking into consideration letters from deans, faculty colleagues and students.

Frederick Hemke

Frederick Hemke is the Louis and Elsie Snydacker Eckstein Professor of Music.

He is a world-renowned saxophone performer, lecturer and teacher. His students speak of his intuitive sense of judging their needs and untapped abilities. Over and over they write about his uncanny ability to bring out the best in them, to inspire them, and motivate them to do more. They say he always seems to know when encouragement, counseling, inspiration or criticism is necessary to achieve the highest results. Hemke’s unique style of teaching, where older students help younger, creates an atmosphere of learning and achievement.

Hemke has served as acting dean of the School of Music and senior associate dean of music; for many years he was Northwestern’s representative to the Big Ten Athletic Conference and faculty representative to the NCAA. He has received the School of Music and Northwestern Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching awards. He has performed or been artist in residence nationally and internationally, including Costa Rica, Russia, Sweden, Holland, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Canada, Norway and France.

Lawrence Henschen

Lawrence Henschen is professor of electrical and computer engineering. His students describe his teaching as clear and passionate; they say he is able to explain the most difficult concepts in ways that made them accessible. They also say he’s precise and creates an atmosphere inside and outside the classroom in which students concentrate their efforts on learning while understanding the larger context of the topic.

He recognizes that students come to his classes with different levels of preparation and he adjusts accordingly, giving every student a fair chance at succeeding. He makes the material interesting by including realistic examples along with humorous anecdotes that soften the mood of the class and make the classroom experience very enjoyable. They find him helpful outside the classroom, as well.

Henschen has received the McCormick School teaching award and the Illinois Gamma Chapter of Tau Beta Pi outstanding teacher award. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Northwestern-Motorola Center for Telecommunications and the Murphy Society. He has directed nearly 70 Ph.D. students.

Melissa Macauley

Melissa Macauley is associate professor of history. Her students praise her passion for Chinese history, her deep interest in her students, and her willingness to guide them in and out of class and after they have graduated. Her syllabi, some as long as six pages, and her extraordinary class handouts, reflect a teaching philosophy that focuses on student learning. Through personal anecdotes of her own time in China as well as her astounding knowledge of the subject, Macauley brings her students the history, personalities and rich cultural relationships of China.

Her students write that she helps them understand what happened and why, not merely memorize the facts. She holds her students to the highest standards while guiding their development as people, as well as novice historians, with passion and understanding.

Macauley was the Wayne V. Jones Research Professor at Northwestern from 2000 to 2002. She has been a Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Qing History in Beijing and has received grants to support her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and a Fulbright grant. Her book “Social Power and Legal Culture” was recognized as the 1999 CHOICE outstanding academic book.

Charles Whitaker

Charles Whitaker is a clinical assistant professor of journalism. His students write of his love for magazines and journalism, of his ability to make the technical and potentially dull subject of editing come alive. They say that he combines theoretical and practical information seamlessly and that students gain an amazing understanding of the magazine world. Despite the fact that by his own admission, he heaps tons of work on his students, that he is sometime brutal in his meticulous grading of their efforts, that he taxes their knowledge of grammar, spelling, civics, math and current events, that he makes them think through the myriad ethical and legal landmines that could ravage any article, however well written, they relish his classes and say that the time seems to fly by. His students benefit from his freely given advice and counsel before and after graduation about professional advancement.

Whitaker’s writing has been recognized with first place awards by the National Association of Education Writers and the Louisville Association of Black Communicators. Before resuming his Northwestern appointment, he was senior editor at Ebony magazine.