Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 31, 2001–Four high school teachers will be honored with Williams College’s George Olmsted, Jr. Class of 1924 National Prize for Excellence in Secondary School Teaching. The awards, which consist of a $2,000 prize to each teacher as well as a $1,000 prize to each of their schools, will be presented during the Williams College Commencement, June 3.
Each year, members of the graduating class are invited to nominate high school teachers who influenced both their personal and intellectual growth. The winners are selected by a committee of faculty, staff, and students, chaired this year by David P. Richardson, professor of chemistry.
This year’s Olmsted recipients are John Awunganyi of Pacific High School in San Bernardino, Calif.; Richard P. Kollen of Lexington High School in Lexington, Mass.; Harriet Marcus of Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child in Summit, N.J.; and Mary B. Wilbur of Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln, Maine.
Funding for the award comes from an endowment from the estate of George Olmsted, Jr. ’24 and gifts from his wife Frances. Though neither was a teacher, the Olmsteds were lifelong proponents of the importance of superior teaching.
John Awunganyi
San Bernardino, California
When Jennifer Abrego ’01 was studying for Advanced Placement exams in mathematics she realized she needed help with some of the problems and turned to her AP Calculus teacher. “Because of my busy schedule, often the only time we could meet was at 6:30 in the morning. It wasn’t until later that I found out Mr. Awunganyi had to get up at 4 a.m. and leave no later than 5:15 a.m. to drive to my high school to meet me. His dedication to this day inspires me,” she wrote in her nomination of John Awunganyi for the Olmsted prize.
Indeed, providing extra help whenever and wherever needed is a hallmark of Awunganyi’s drive to help all students reach their full potential. Abrego explains that as she and teammates prepared for academic competitions, “Mr. Awunganyi was always there to help us study, giving us hints and ways to solve problems. He showed us how to understand this language [of math], and so I began to become comfortable with it and looked forward to taking calculus with him.”
The care and attention Awunganyi devotes to both his students and his school are boundless. Upon learning that many of his students could not afford the expensive graphing calculators used in most calculus classes today, he secured funds for a class set of calculators, no easy feat in a school where over 60 percent of the students receive free or reduced lunch. When some of the calculators were stolen, he used his own money to replace them.
Born in Cameroon, Awunganyi’s first teaching experience was as a math teacher at St. Joseph’s College in Sasse, Cameroon, after receiving his B.S. in 1978 and his M.S. in 1980 in mathematics from California State Polytechnic University. He also received an M.A. in mathematics from California State University, San Bernardino in 1998 while teaching at Pacific High School. It is often observed that his classes are a model of exemplary teaching.
Perhaps it is Awunganyi himself who best states what it is that makes his teaching so special: “Whatever I do as a teacher, my ultimate, all-absorbing concern is to produce students of [a high] caliber, students who will always strive to succeed in any field that they undertake and finally be productive members of their community.”
Richard P. Kollen
Lexington, Massachusetts
In the worst-case scenarios, people become teachers to get summer vacations off. In best-case scenarios, people who become teachers use their summer vacations to improve their work. Richard Kollen is one of the best of the best-case scenarios. Refusing to let his teaching stop expanding, he attends a demanding summer institute or course nearly every summer, returning to school each fall ready to share all that he’s learned with his students.
Carissa Carter ’01 recalls the importance of the challenges with which he presented her and her classmates at Lexington High School in shaping her academic development. “Mr. Kollen did not just teach us historical facts; he taught us to critique historical interpretation, to analyze, to think, and to notice bias and gaps in information,” she explains. “While he focused intensely on our writing and understanding of the material, he made history tangible, exciting, and come alive through his emphasis on primary sources.”
As part of these continuing efforts to bring history to life, he assigned a class project based on research in the town archives, obtaining special permission for his students to dig through boxes of original documentation that had literally not been seen in centuries. “Each student’s topic and presentation was unique, something that had never been researched before, and based on his or her original research in the archives. Mr. Kollen taught us the skills we needed to create first-rate papers that are now permanent documents of the Lexington Historical Society,” Carter praises.
Kollen has received a number of other honors for his teaching and expertise, including being named 1999 Lexington Secondary Teacher of the Year. In the award presentation, Secondary Curriculum Director Diane Tabor said, “His sense of purpose, his store of knowledge and his love of learning are matched by his caring, concern and compassion for young people. He wishes to engage them, and to bring out their best. He is a teacher of legendary school.”
Kollen received his B.A. in 1973 from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and his M.Ed. in 1980 from Salem State College. He also received an M.L.A. in history from Harvard University in 1993. Some of the most recent institutes he has attended include an NEH Institute on Southern Society in the Late 19th Century at Georgetown University and an institute on teaching at the National Archives. Kollen’s other honors include working as an expert reader for several large publishing companies, acting as an archivist for the Lexington Historical Society and selection as a reader for the U.S. History Advanced Placement Exam.
But perhaps his greatest accolade comes in the words of his former student, Carter, who said, “Mr. Kollen’s classroom was always alive and dynamic. He managed to spark discussion and ignite debate among the quietest of us. His was the class that nobody skipped.”
Harriet Marcus
Summit, New Jersey
Of course, any good teacher wants their students to succeed. But, it takes a special teacher to make sure that each success involves conquering a challenge. For Heather Barney ’01, that’s what made Harriet Marcus such an exceptional and inspiring teacher. She said, ” Mrs. Marcus helped to nurture and develop my self-esteem and abilities, but not to the exclusion of the challenges of intellectual discomfort and growth. Mrs. Marcus did more than any other high school teacher to unsettle my ways of thinking.”
Marcus is responsible in large part for developing a program that allows teachers to teach the texts that they want to. It is an arrangement that benefits not only the teachers, but also the students who have the chance to learn from someone who loves what he or she is teaching.
One of Marcus’s most important contributions to the school has been the creation of a Writer’s Roundtable, where students can bring their extracurricular creative writing to a group of their peers for comment and critique. “I have no doubt that the love of writing which Mrs. Marcus instills in group members is vital to their academic success later in their careers,” Barney said of the program.
Marcus also makes an impact by truly trying to understand her students, doing whatever it takes to make sure that they know they can relate to her. “So long as she wants to make that connection, she will, and her students will be better for it,” Barney said of her friend and teacher.
Marcus earned her B.A. from Douglass College in 1964 and her M.Ed. from Rutgers University in 1978. She has received several awards for her teaching. Most recently, an endowment was given by the family of some of her former students in her honor to establish a lecture series of famous writers. She is also a judge in the National Council of Teachers creative writing competition in New Jersey and a member of Kappa Delta Pi, the Honor Education Society.
Most importantly to her, however, she is a teacher. She explains, “I realize that there isn’t any other career I would have wanted. I am so proud to be an English teacher. It has allowed me to help hundreds of girls find and use their voices for presenting ideas, discussing them, analyzing and defending them orally and in writing.” And by all accounts, those young women are much better off for her efforts.
Mary B. Wilbur
Lincoln, Maine
“Mrs. Wilbur, being so often the catalyst for programs, has the mysterious ability to inspire other people to share her vision and perseverance. It is this fact that has brought me to look up to her with complete awe and respect for the dedication she has to all that she does,” wrote Richard Haynes ’01 in nominating Mary Wilbur for an Olmsted award.
Indeed, looking at Wilbur’s accomplishments throughout her more than 20 years of teaching, projects and answers spring up around her wherever she turns. Richard Greenlaw, principal of Mattanawcook Academy, said, “Mrs. Wilbur has made many contributions to school life through her willingness to advise extracurricular activities. When we did not have a coach for our indoor track team, Mrs. Wilbur did an excellent job of coaching. We had a need for a yearbook advisor and she stepped forward. Mrs. Wilbur became our math team coach/advisor [and] the next year a Math Problem Solving class was implemented.”
Wilbur pursued ever-expanding goals for her students, hosting math tournaments, and starting math camps, which are for many, important trips away from home. “Any opportunity she could find for her students, she pursued, and if there wasn’t one already in place, she designed it,” Haynes said. “It is through this determination that our school gained both the Problem Solving class and the Engineering Team, both of which were successful beyond anyone’s dreams.”
Wilbur explained her own philosophy more simply, “I have tried to deal with every student in the way that we would all like our own precious child to be dealt with.”
Wilbur earned her B.A. in mathematics from the University of Maine in 1964. She started her work in teaching by working closely and intensely with what are now called high-risk students, teaching in small classes, tutoring at night and leading “cultural enrichment trips.” She worked in Florida with the children of migrant workers where sometimes the greatest obstacle was meeting health and nutritional needs as well as meeting their educational requirements.
Her excitement for teaching remains high as she works through problems with her students as much as teaching them. And whatever problems stand in the way of her students getting the best education possible in the future, all those who know her feel sure that she will continue to push aside. Explains Haynes, “She would not, and never has since then, take no for an answer when it came to the welfare of her students.”
END
Published May 31, 2001
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