2019 Haggerty Teaching Excellence Awards

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2019 Haggerty Teaching Excellence Awards

Presentation of Haggerty Teaching Awards 2019

It was the Haggerty Family Foundation and Pat Haggerty’s great desire to honor teaching excellence at the University of Dallas that he witnessed as a student and as a member of the Board of Trustees that lead to this addition to our faculty awards.

The 2019 Haggerty Teaching Excellence Awards — supported and made possible by the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Foundation and determined by student and alumni votes — recognized the following faculty for their dedication to and excellence in teaching:

Name	Description
Dale Fodness	This professor has been a student favorite for years, known for making students feel valuable and capable. Patient and supportive, he excels in helping his students in collaborative projects. Thus he is a superlative Capstone professor. His skill in consulting is appreciated both within the University, for example our Constantin Dean’s Office, as well as by internationally known firms such as Microsoft, Ericsson, Cisco and American Airlines. His skills in marketing have influenced students not only here, but in Finland where he is a visiting professor at Aalto University.
Peter Hatlie	This professor is beloved by scores of UD undergraduates. Respected as knowledgeable and wise, this professor also delights the students with a lively teaching method, engaging students with exciting renderings of history across the centuries. An internationally known scholar on medieval monasticism, he is also fluent in modern Greek, making him an apt guide for students in modern Greek monasteries like Hosias Loukas. His passion and dedication not only influence students in the classroom, but have guided and transformed our Rome Program as Dean.
Rich Olenick	This professor is acknowledged by all to be a quintessential UD professor. Generations of students have clamored to get into his core class, and our registrars know to expect it to fill up quickly, and advisers wait for the requests to get into his class once it’s full. His Charity Week stunts are the stuff of legend. Students characterize him as knowledgeable, relatable, engaging and involved, humorous, with an obvious love of teaching. He makes his classroom environment inclusive and he explains concepts of physics in such a way that allows anyone to understand, regardless of their field of study. His summer Astronomy programs are almost as popular as his Astronomy core course. His excellence is not only acknowledged by us, but by the state of Texas as a Minnie Stevens Piper professor.
John Alvis	This professor has devoted his life to the UD heritage. Known as brilliant and iconic, his skill in opening up the text and training students to become careful readers is unmatched. With his long periodic sentences, he imparts wisdom with style and grace. His expertise runs the gamut from Homer to Hemingway, but his unquenchable thirst for knowledge leads him to tackle new subjects with vigor. He lectures with such gravitas and claritas that he is a delight to behold. Excellent at facilitating discussion, thoughtful analysis of text, profoundly insightful. Dr. Alvis's grasp on the texts we discussed in his classes was masterful. His questions were superb. More than a first rate teacher in literature, he gives good counsel about how to live. Such counsel stems from his own interest in viewing literature through a political lens, especially that of virtue and honor. He is an internationally acknowledged expert on Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and Melville.
Katie Davis	This professor is a junior professor who has ignited the minds of students in core classes from the very beginning. Engaging, exciting, passionate, this professor exudes professionalism, poise, and care for all her students. Her teaching lessons in the classroom are full of her passion and love of literature, and she communicates this passion to her students. Even outside the classroom, she can be found organizing events that encourage the enjoyment of literature, both formal and informal, such as discussion panels, teaching seminars, and "afternoon tea" roundtable discussions. At home in the world of Dante, she is equally at home with Jane Austen. Having just published a book on Liberty in Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

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