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2003 Announcement of Award Recipient

2006 Award - Call for Nominations

In a letter to Interim President Lee Huntsman, Dean Marsha Landolt  announces the Distinguished Mentor Award recipient for 2003.

A list of previous recipients is made available here.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON The Graduate School G-1 Communications Box 353770 Seattle, Washington  98195-3770

February 14, 2003

Dr. Lee Huntsman
Interim President
301 Gerberding Hall
Box 351230

Dear Lee:

It is my pleasure to forward to you the name of Professor Charles Keyes (Department of Anthropology) as the recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award. We received nearly 300 letters of nomination for 73 members of the University of Washington faculty.
I appointed an ad hoc committee to review the nominations. Members included

• Professor Judith Howard (Chair, Women Studies and Professor of Sociology, 2001 award recipient),
• Professor David Notkin (Computer Science and Engineering, 2000 award recipient),
• Professor David Eaton (Professor, Environmental Health)
• Professor Noel Weiss (Professor, Epidemiology, 1999 award recipient)
• Jeffrey Allan Clark (graduate student representative, Zoology)
• Johnnella Butler, Elizabeth Feetham, and Jody Nyquist. (Graduate School)

A number of the nominees received multiple letters expressing glowing praise for their mentors. Two candidates emerged as being uniquely worthy of recognition. In addition to Professor Keyes, the finalists for the award were Professor Avery Guest, Professor (Sociology), and Raimonda Modiano, Professor (English and Comparative Literature).

The call for nominations noted that,

"...the relationship between a graduate student and a faculty advisor is one that can have a profound, lifelong influence on both parties. At its best, this mentoring relationship inspires and gives confidence to the student while providing the faculty member with a valued colleague."

Charles (Biff) Keyes has been nominated nearly every year for the Distinguished Mentor Award. Miriam Kahn, Chair of Anthropology, states that Professor Keyes has chaired the committees of 33 students who have completed their Ph.D.s and currently chairs for nine students completing their doctoral degree; she states that “this is a higher number than any other faculty member in the Department of Anthropology since it was founded.” The selection committee catagorized the letters nominating Professor Keyes (enclosed) as “passionate” and they provide eloquent testimony to the exemplary relationship described above. The letters speak not only to his involvement with them as a Professor, but as a human being. He has opened his heart as well as his home to his graduate students. I have excerpted some quotes from the letters as a sample:

• His deep commitment to his students and his field goes beyond professional integrity to reflect the kind of person who thinks about others before himself, who shares deeply in the joys and struggles of each individual student, and who dedicates himself to making the world a better place with each life that he touches.

• From the entire course of my graduate studies in the United States, Dr. Charles Keyes is the only non-Thai professor with whom I am comfortable enough to address him in my own way on the foreign soil in an American institution. Other students may call him “Biff,” if they feel they are close to him. I call him “Acham Keyes.” He has moved beyond the American academic boundary. The word Acham in Thai means a teacher or a professor with highly respected status: he/she dedicates his/her lifetime to teaching and mentoring.

• I have never met anyone who gave so fully to his students, and did so, remarkably, without playing favorites. My remembrances of Biff are not filled with fireworks or one-time inspirational events. On the contrary, what made him the mentor he is comes from his constant dedication to students like myself over the long term, even after I have come to be a junior colleague and no longer a student.

• He always encouraged students to talk to each other about writing, teaching, work prospects and life. This sense of community was most manifest at the parties Biff and Jane would have before the winter holidays and throughout the year when he would fete his recently finished Ph.D. students.

• When he visited in 1996, I witnessed the strong bonds of affection he’d cultivated and maintained with people he’d first known as a graduate student 30 years before. ...This widely shared feeling that Biff’s heart resonates with what is best in people—all people—speaks most highly to the kind of personal integrity to which I myself aspire. The way he conducts the classroom is exemplary –light, respectful, democratic, warm without condescension, lit up with curiosity, fresh with ideas.

It is my understanding that you will personally notify Biff that he has been selected for this honor. After you have done so, I will also speak with him to convey my personal appreciation for his abiding dedication to excellence in graduate education.

I am very proud that the Graduate School is able to offer this award in conjunction with other University-wide honors. It has been uplifting for our committee to read the letters that are written on behalf of the U.W. faculty mentors. Indeed, each year it is a very difficult task to narrow the list down to only one award recipient. It is rewarding to have the opportunity to publicly recognize the intense, one-on-one relationship that is the hallmark of graduate education.

Sincerely,
 

Marsha L. Landolt
Dean and Vice Provost

Enclosures

cc: David Thorud, Acting Provost

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