Diekhoff Award

After 20 years in industry, Philip A. Cola pursued what he remembers as the “most difficult professional decision that I had to make in my life:” leaving his executive-level career in health care research to follow his passion to become a professor at his alma mater. Now Cola uses his teaching to he...

In each of his anatomy classes, Andrew “Andy” Crofton tailors his teaching method to the students as individuals—a style they say creates an environment in which they feel respected and motivated to achieve at their highest level. It's among the many reasons Crofton, assistant professor of anatomy a...

Years ago, Karen Potter (GRS ’89), professor and chair of the Department of Dance, observed a colleague providing feedback to a student. The exchange was quiet and private so that only the student could hear the instructor’s words of criticism or praise. Potter was so impressed by what she observed...

Until he became an instructor himself, James “Jim” Spilsbury thought the quality of a college course was strictly up to the professor. But once in that role, while teaching his first few anthropology classes at Case Western Reserve University, it quickly dawned on him: The success of a course is as...

At first blush, the word that Tim Goler uses to describe his mentor, Eva Kahana—as “family”—would seem to belie their dissimilar backgrounds. Kahana is a Hungarian Jewish refugee who survived Nazi occupation, the Holocaust and a brutal Communist rule in her native country to become a sociology scho...

Anant Madabhushi, the F. Alex Nason Professor II of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve, is among the leading global authorities in medical-image analysis, computational pathology and artificial intelligence in precision medicine. But Madabhushi, director of the Center for Computational ...

When Brian Gran began his career in academia nearly 20 years ago, “collaboration” wasn’t as common a term or practice as it is today. But his areas of expertise—law and society, human rights and health policy—couldn’t fit into a single discipline if they were to be taught effectively, Gran said. In...

Having never led a classroom before, Maggie Vinter moved to Japan in her early 20s to become a teacher of English as a second language to middle schoolers. “Seeing students go from not knowing to knowing—experiencing ideas as brand new—I found a love for teaching,” said Vinter, assistant professor...

Elina Gertsman knows what it’s like to feel lost as a graduate student. With a seemingly disinterested doctoral adviser and no mentoring program available to her, she sensed she would need to navigate her graduate school experience alone. That was until she took a leap of faith in pursuit of a ...

Brian Cobb recalled the transforming effects of his first mentor. “When I was a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma (OU), I took a class in organic chemistry with Dr. Roland Lehr,” he said. “I went to his office with a question, and after answering it, he asked me my plans for a career. I said...