Richard Lublin's Teaching Award Encourages Innovation at Duke.
Pictured here: Charlotte Sussman, Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Professor of English, named 2019-2020 recipient of the Richard Lublin Teaching Award. (Duke University Photo)
Distinguished Award Advances Teaching Mission at the University.
Avon, CT & Naples, FL: May 19, 2020 — Duke alumnus and philanthropist Richard Lublin, a resident of Naples, FL and formerly of Avon, CT recently congratulated Charlotte Sussman, Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Professor of English, for receiving the 2019 – 2020 Richard Lublin Teaching Award.
Sussman is the 34th recipient of the Lublin teaching scholarship, since it was first awarded to two winners in 1993. Richard Lublin, a Duke benefactor for over 25 years, praised Professor Sussman for being chosen to receive the award. "Recognizing teaching excellence has a ripple effect — it promotes best practices in education. I applaud Charlotte Sussman for her innovative teaching methods, creativity and inspiration."
Colleagues and students recently described Professor Sussman: "As further evidence of the vitality of Professor Sussman's teaching method, one of the students in the most recent section of the 'Doctor's Stories' class was so excited by that course that she went on to develop a spring 2019 House Course on 'Human Experimentation in Medicine and Literature,' which Professor Sussman sponsored. It's difficult to imagine a more compelling testimony to the success of this class and Professor Sussman's teaching."
"I am truly honored to receive the Richard Lublin Teaching Award," Sussman recently replied. "I'm grateful to Duke University for providing so many ways to explore innovative and discipline-crossing forms of learning, and to my students for being so thoughtful, creative, energetic and for teaching me so much. Receiving this award now, when online teaching challenges us to reach students over greater distances, inspires me to try harder than ever to create intellectual community. Reading great literature together can be a powerful act of resistance against isolation and despair, so I appreciate this recognition of the importance of the humanities in asserting the value of human experience in all its complexity."
According to Duke's website, Sussman currently serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. University of Pennsylvania Press released her most recent scholarly work earlier in 2020, Peopling the World Representing Human Mobility from Milton to Malthus. She also authored Consuming Anxieties: Consumer Protest, Gender, and British Slavery, 1713-1833, and Eighteenth-Century British Literature, 1660-1789.
Duke English Department Chair Robert Mitchell added, "This Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award is one of four that recognizes truly outstanding teaching in the College. Recipients are selected on the basis of their ability to encourage intellectual excitement and curiosity in students, knowledge of a field and ability to communicate it, organizational skills, mentorship of students, and commitment to excellent teaching over time."
The Richard Lublin Award is presented annually within the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. Lublin established the award in 1993 to recognize undergraduate teaching excellence in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences at Duke University. The winner receives $5,000 and is recognized during an Arts & Sciences Awards ceremony each year.
