Faculty Awards
The University of Washington Honors Program employs amazing faculty to develop and teach unique, leading-edge courses across many areas of knowledge. These courses engage students in experiences, research and conversations that challenge all parties to be more nuanced thinkers who value a wide spread of perspectives.
All UW Honors faculty members are also appointed in major departments that serve undergraduates beyond our program’s mandate. So, when Honors recognizes and awards special resources towards the creative growth of UW faculty who teach for Honors, we are also investing in the education of every Husky.
The University of Washington’s talented educators continue learning and developing fresh connections and methods of engagement in many ways: rooted in home departments, in field work, and through the following special awards that recognize the incredible value teachers bring to our community of lifelong learners.
Curriculum and Community Innovation Scholar
This appointment is made possible through generous gifts from donors to support faculty time to develop and teach groundbreaking curriculum while engaging Honors community students, alumni, faculty and staff in events and projects beyond the classroom.
Felicia Ishino
2023-2024

Felicia Ishino is the Executive Director of Sankofa Impact, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to confronting racism and resistance through place-based learning experiences. She has over 20 years of experience in educational settings ranging from elementary schools to higher education. With her passions for history, immersive learning and social justice, Ishino is eager to empower students to become agents of change in their communities. Her Honors course, Locating Racism and Resistance, aims to raise awareness of historical events that have impacted systems of racism and oppression in the United States and encourage students to take action on a personal and professional level.
Past Curriculum and Community Innovation Scholars
Ariana Cantu
Ariana Cantu
2022-2023

Ariana Cantu is a popular lecturer in UW’s School of Social Work with an MSW in Social Work and Administration. She has extensive experience teaching and counseling diverse populations and facilitating anti-racism and equity-centered practices. Cantu is committed to intersectional social justice and will use her award teach and develop new curriculum that grounds students in grassroots community activism. Cantu is teaching students from all backgrounds how to communicate research and recommendations using a hands-on, project-based approach. Her Honors seminar, Community Inclusion and Equity in the Changing Public Realm, critically examines changes in local neighborhoods in an effort to support collaborative equity and inclusion efforts in Seattle and King County.
Velma Veloria
Velma Veloria
2019-2021

Velma Veloria, Director of Advocacy and Mobilization for the Equity in Education Coalition, joined the Honors Program in 2019 as our first Curriculum and Community Innovation Scholar. As the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the Washington State Legislature, Veloria contributed her a rich history of grassroots leadership and advocacy expertise. During her two-year appointment, Veloria created courses about civic activism and human trafficking, engaged students in cultural exploration of Seattle’s International District, and lead conversations around to get involved and make change.
Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship
In 2007, Northwest Businessman Jerry Hanauer established an endowment in the College of Arts and Sciences in honor of his son, Joff Hanauer. Among other things, the endowment provides for a Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization, the first professorship in Honors.
The Hanauer Professorship recognizes a faculty member whose research and teaching address issues pertinent to our civilization. Hanauer Professors teach and participate in the life of the Honors Program, lending valuable perspective to Honors initiatives and community conversations. Hanauer Professors serve on the Honors Advisory Council, mentor students beyond the classroom, and participate in events. The generous gift that funds this award underscores the importance of Honors as an interdisciplinary catalyst at the University of Washington.
LaShawnDa Pittman – American Ethnic Studies; Sociology
2022-2024

LaShawnDa Pittman (she/her), UW Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology, addresses the coping experiences of socially marginalized women, including Black women raising a second and third generation and those living with poor health outcomes. Her other research interests include social stratification and inequality; urban poverty; race and ethnicity; gender and families; research methods; public policy; and health disparities. Pittman is also the founder and director of the Black digital humanities project, Real Black Grandmothers. Members of the UW Honors community might remember Pittman from Global Challenges events in 2015 and 2022, where she shared her perspectives on public health and displacement, respectively.
Past Hanauer Professors
Daniel Bessner
Daniel Bessner – U.S. Foreign Affairs
2020-2022

Daniel Bessner is an associate professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and was previously the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Professor in American Foreign Policy. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. Bessner’s Hanauer appointment reflects his intellectual leadership, energetic and innovative teaching style, and impressive commitment to improving popular understanding of the history, challenges and opportunities of U.S. foreign policy. Bessner’s continual desire to create an intelligent, compassionate world where all people are treated equally guides his contributions to scholarship and public discourse. His impressive library of published works, which have appeared in venues such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian, may be found on his website.
María Elena García
María Elena García – CHID; Anthropology
2018-2020

María Elena García is associate professor in the Comparative History of Ideas program and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She received her PhD in Anthropology at Brown University and has been a Mellon Fellow at Wesleyan University and Tufts University. Her first book, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru (Stanford, 2005) explores Indigenous and intercultural politics in the Andes. Her second book, Culinary Spectacles: Gastro-Politics, and Other Tales of Race and Species in Peru (under contract with the University of California Press), examines the intersections of race, species, and capital in contemporary Peru.
Bill Tolbott
Bill Talbott – Philosophy
2016-2018

Bill Talbott has taught philosophy at the University of Washington since 1989. He focuses on moral and political philosophy, especially the philosophy of human rights, and epistemology.
In 2011, he won the UW Distinguished Teaching Award. He has been a member of the Steering Committee for the UW Center for Human Rights since the Center’s founding in 2009 and he is a co-founder and co-principal investigator of the tri-campus research cluster on Human Interactions and Normative Innovation (HI-NORM), which is part of an international network of scholars doing research related to human rights. This year he is looking forward to teaching a new Honors course, “Human Rights from the Bottom Up.”
Robin Stacey
Robin Stacey – History
2014-2016

Robin Chapman Stacey is a specialist in medieval history and law, particularly of early Ireland and Wales. She has been at the University of Washington since 1988, and is the author of a variety of books and articles on topics pertaining to Celtic studies. Her research has been supported by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and she is a past winner of the UW’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Classes she teaches regularly include, in addition to medieval history survey courses, “Myths and Mysteries of the Middle Ages;” “Celtic Civilizations;” “Medieval Women,” and “Reading Tolkien,” a class that she developed originally for Honors and is delighted to be bringing back into the program this year.
José Antonio Lucero
José Antonio Lucero – Jackson School of International Studies
2012-2014

José Antonio (Tony) Lucero is Chair of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the principal organizer of the 2012-13 John E. Sawyer Seminar in Comparative Culture at the University of Washington, funded by the Mellon Foundation. A graduate of Stanford (BA, Political Science) and Princeton (MA/PhD, Politics) Lucero has also studied at the Universitá di Firenze and the Colegio de México. He teaches courses on international political economy, cultural interactions, social movements, Latin American politics, and borderlands.
Located at the intersections of political and cultural analysis, his research examines the encounters between Western and Indigenous political projects in the Americas and has been supported by external grants from funders including the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the Ford Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Lucero is the author of Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes, a work that puts canonical Western theories of political order (including those of Hobbes, Burke, Gramsci, and Foucault) in dialogue with the praxis of indigenous social movements.
He is currently working on research projects on the cultural politics of (1) conflicts between Awajún/Wampis Indigenous communities and the filmmaker Werner Herzog in Peru (2) human rights activism, religion, and Indigenous politics on the Mexico-US border. He is co-editor of theOxford Handbook of Indigenous Peoples Politics (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and co-author of several works with fellow UW Professor María Elena García (CHID), the most recent of which is their son José Antonio Simón Lucero-García (future UW Class of 2033).
Ken Clatterbaugh
Ken Clatterbaugh – Philosophy
2010-2012

Professor Ken Clatterbaugh has served as Chairman of the Department of Philosophy since 1996. His current scholarly interests include: the development of philosophical ideas about causation, especially at the beginning of modern science; how social movements come into being and why they fade away; and the interaction between religion and civil society.
His books include: The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 1637-1739; and, Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity, Men, Women, and Politics in Modern Society. He is currently at work on a satirical book about religion. Conversations with undergraduate students are the favorite parts of his day. He will be serving as the Joff Hanauer Professor in Western Civilization for 2010-2012.
Leroy Searle
Leroy Searle – English; Comparative Literature
2008-10

The first holder of the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization is Leroy Searle, a professor in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature. Professor Searle’s areas of specialization include American Literature, Computer Aided Instruction, and Literary Criticism and Theory. Like Heracles at the crossroad in Greek mythology, Leroy had to make a choice after college: the study of genome science or English literature. Although he chose the latter, his breadth of interests, including science, computer programming, the arranging and performance of music, not to mention motorcycle maintenance, makes him a great model for thinking across and beyond academic disciplines. He offered his inaugural course in Honors, “Traditions of Justice,” in spring of 2009 and focused on the central place accorded to the idea of justice in the intellectual and cultural traditions of the West, with attention paid to justice as an ethical and religious concept, as the foundation for the rule of law, and as reflected in literature and art.
The Honors Excellence in Teaching Award
Honors students determine the annual recipient of our “Honors Excellence in Teaching Award” in recognition of the knowledge, enthusiasm, and dedication these special instructors and mentors bring to the classroom.
Jake Cooper (biology)
2020-2021
Dr. Jacob Cooper, Department of Biology, overcomes a difficult year of teaching online school and excels in delivering enthusiasm to his students. With a special focus on educational equity and game theory, Dr. Cooper engages students in activities and modalities that make learning fun.
Jon Heron (biology)
2019-2020, 2016-2017, 2013-2014, 2002-2003
Jon Heron is without question one of the most beloved Honors professors in the history of our program. Whether you’re already a fan of Dr. Herron or you could just use a spark of joy in your day, you will want to click below! Watch Jon bat away compliments for 15 whole minutes! Enjoy the many secret comments he makes about Honors students in this very public video chat.
Moon Draper (biology) and Charity Urbanski (history)
2018-2019
Interdisciplinary Honors/biology professor Moon Draper and Departmental Honors/history professor Charity Urbanski were tied in nominations for our annual teaching award in spring of 2019. Students cited their passion for the subject matter, flexible style that includes many ways of learning and individual student perspectives and willingness to commit extra time and attention outside of class to guarantee success for those motivated to take them up on it.
Learn about Moon Draper and Charity Urbanski
Joel Walker (history)
2017-2018
Dr. Joel Walker, an Associate Professor of History and the inaugural holder of the Lawrence J. Roseman Endowed Professorship at the University of Washington, dazzles students with his demanding, high-charisma, multi-faceted approach to history, earning him this year’s coveted Honors teaching award. Through his courses, Walker has inspired hundreds of UW Honors undergrads to care deeply about history, to communicate effectively and creatively, and to open new horizons for their own reading, travel, and thinking.
Past Honors Excellence in Teaching Award Recipients
-
2017-18
Joel Walker
History -
2016-17
Jon Herron
Biology -
2015-16
Clare Bright
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies -
2014-15
Theo Myhre
School of Law -
2013-14
Jon Herron
Biology -
2012-13
Frances McCue
English -
2011-12
Andrew Loveless
Mathematics -
2010-11
Zev Handel
Asian Languages & Literature -
2009-10
Lisa Schultz
Art History -
2008-09
Eugene Edgar
Education -
2007-08
Stewart Tolnay
Sociology -
2006-07
James Allen Morrow
Mathematics -
2005-06
Mary Pat Wenderoth
Biology -
2004-05
Bob Dumas
Philosophy -
2003-04
Steven Herbert
Law, Societies, and Justice -
2002-03
Jon Herron
Zoology -
2001-02
Clarke Speed
Anthropology