BY MARK SKERTIC
The Cincinnati Enquirer
An architecture professor who learned some of his teaching philosophy from Woody Hayes and an instructor known for injecting humor into his classes on surgery have been honored as the top teachers at the University of Cincinnati.
Architect David Niland and Israel Penn, director of surgical student education, each have won the Mrs. A.B. "Dolly" Cohen Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Mr. Niland said he was an indifferent student when he went to Denison University to play football for Mr. Hayes, later the nationally famous coach at Ohio State. But when a knee injury ended Mr. Niland's football career before it began, he was encouraged by Coach Hayes to tackle academics with the same drive he had tackled athletics. It's a philosophy he has tried to remember, Mr. Niland said: "He had an intensity and a focus and a commitment to excellence, and it didn't really matter in what area."
Although the award is an honor, the May 12 accident that injured six architecture students returning from an out-of-town field trip has dimmed enthusiasm in the department, Mr. Niland said. Three of the students remain hospitalized.
The second Cohen winner, Dr. Penn, said he doesn't lecture. His classes are lively, sometimes humorous discussions. "They learn by having to answer questions, and I try to keep it on a level that doesn't become too highbrow," he said.
The Cohen Award is named for the late widow of the president of U.S. Shoe Corp.
Other faculty awards were also presented at UC's all-university faculty meeting. They were:
Dr. H. Hughes Hawkins won the Oscar Schmidt Public Service Award for efforts to help the disabled live independently. A professor of radiology, he has worked with Living Arrangements for the Developmentally Disabled.
William Wee received the George B. Barbour Award for promoting good faculty-student relations. During 27 years at UC he has preached an ethic of hard work and dedication to foreign students' adjusting to the United States and to other students, particularly minorities, he has worked with at the university.
Chemist R. Marshall Wilson was honored with the George Rieveschl Jr. Award for Distinguished Scientific Research. His work with lasers has come close to reproducing the power of the sun in a laboratory, according to UC reports. He is refining techniques that can cut DNA at a precise point.
Poet Don Bogen, professor of English, received the George Rieveschl Jr. Award for Excellence in Creative or Scholarly Work. Mr. Bogen has been published in a variety of literary journals and has written two books of poetry, The Known World and After the Splendid Display and a book of criticism, A Necessary Order.
