SCS is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Awards for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics at the College and University Level:
Please click each name above to read the full award citations below.
What do a large mythology class, where students discuss national mythmaking by interrogating the words and music of the Broadway hit “Hamilton,” a January-term offering on “Gender and Race in Disney Movies,” and a first-year Greek course focusing on building proficiency through metacognitive reflection have in common? They are all the creations of Professor Yurie Hong, who, as a colleague attests, “has dedicated herself to widening the appeal of the classical world, showing her students, including those who might not have felt welcomed into the study of our field in the past, how a more expansive idea of what is relevant and important in Greek and Roman literature, language, and history can enrich their lives.”
Professor Hong attends to the needs of her students in every possible way, planning courses that build transferable skills, such as close reading and communication, while simultaneously cultivating their understanding of the humanities, in order to be able to thrive in a complex and diverse world. She crafts assignments that make classics real to her students: viewing and discussing a production of Antigone in Ferguson, having students research the Dakota War and Swedish immigrant communities alongside the journeys of Odysseus and Aeneas, and reflecting on the concrete skills for a future job, which they have gained from coursework in her class. Moreover, all of this takes place in an environment based on collaboration, where students, their experiences, and expertise are valued. Her students feel themselves to be part of a “team,” where her emphasis on collaboration allowed “us students to find our own strengths and weaknesses and help each other. No one was ever left out.” Students praise the classroom atmosphere that allows all students “to be vulnerable and honest because she is.” This student-centered approach to teaching, assessment, and inclusion transforms her students. One student observed that “before this course, I placed grades at a higher value than my own mental and physical well-being…Dr. Hong helped me to reshape my thinking and learning.”
Her experiments in teaching are founded in detailed research. For example, she organized a regional workshop on “Creating an Inclusive Classics Curriculum” prior to developing a course on “Ancient and Modern Identities.” Her study and implementation of “ungrading” in her Greek 102 course has resulted in unprecedented retention and several Greek majors. Her efforts to reach all students also lead to life-long learning: “In my everyday life now, outside of undergrad, I find myself drawing connections and exploring things in the same way I was taught in Yurie Hong’s classes.”
We are honored to recognize Yurie Hong for her outstanding teaching with the SCS’s 2023 Award for Excellence in Teaching of the Classics at the College and University Level.
Jessica Paga’s success in the classroom springs from three priorities. She is committed to introducing her students to a wide range of skills and modalities for analyzing materials from the ancient world. She brings her research interests around ability, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion into the classroom. And she has constructed varied and detailed teaching materials to guide students carefully through the development of skills from textual analysis to photogrammetry.
Professor Paga brings the ancient world alive for her students in a broad range of courses, from topics in ancient Mediterranean archaeology to Greek and Roman tragedy. Common to this diverse subject matter is her commitment to active learning. Students in her “Greek and Roman Tragedy” course not only read ancient plays and learn the techniques of scholarly analysis, but bring them to life on stage, workshopping scenes throughout the semester and constructing their own sets and costumes. In a similar vein, her “Archaeology of Ritual” course encourages students to interpret ancient textual and material evidence, as well as to follow in the archaeologist’s footsteps by familiarizing themselves with ancient artifacts through photogrammetry and scale drawing.
Professor Paga finds many opportunities to bring her research interests in ancient archaeology before her students’ eyes using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, so that even the students who cannot personally experience the trips she leads to Pompeii can get a sense of what it was like to live and work in ancient Greek and Roman cities. This work connects with her research on mobility in the ancient world, where she is using VR and AR encounters to explore and explain how ancient buildings aided or hindered accessibility. Her insights into the influence of differing ability levels on daily life experiences in antiquity, and her experience serving as her department's Diversity and Inclusion liaison, translate into sensitive attention to the diverse needs of her own students. Her students comment that she creates a classroom environment that is comfortable even for neurodiverse students who are not naturally confident at speaking in front of others, and that she is deeply attentive to the needs of students she leads on study-abroad and fieldwork trips.
The varied experiences she offers her students are transformed into deep learning opportunities through careful scaffolding. By the time her students perform their selections from ancient tragedy, they have not only thoroughly familiarized themselves with the text, but also learned about the techniques and contexts of ancient tragic performance, as well as techniques like storyboarding and set and costume design to help them move from text to stage. Professor Paga provides her students with guiding questions to help them get the most out of this experience, as well as to help them work smoothly together as a team.
In her “Archaeology of Ritual” course, students gradually learn several different ways of responding both to ancient evidence and modern scholarship. She requires a spectrum of types of engagement with weekly discussion prompts, each explained in detail: one week students may be asked to consider a real-world application of a theoretical concept; another week they learn to write a formal précis of a scholarly article; another week they submit a sketch or architectural plan. Two “practicum” assignments round out the term: a scale drawing and a venture into photogrammetry, each allowing the student to choose their own study object from the Classical Studies collection. The practicum closes with a reflection assignment where students consider the advantages they see in each type of representation.
Professor Paga’s engaged and supportive teaching has already left a legacy of dedicated students who have participated in field schools, study abroad experiences, thesis projects, and other extended engagements with her. Her students praise her empathy and commitment to diversity, the “contagious joy” she brings to the classroom, and the broad skill sets they have acquired in her courses. As one student exclaims, “any student able to take one of her classes is lucky!”
The SCS is delighted to honor Jessica Paga with the 2023 Award for Excellence in Teaching of the Classics at the College and University Level.
With over 40 courses under her belt, Katerina Zacharia is an experienced instructor with a proven track record of excellence and innovation in pedagogy. In courses such as “Greek Tragedy in Performance”, and “Classical Hellenism, Race, and Ethnicity,” Professor Zacharia vividly interrogates both past and present, connecting passionate and scholarly explorations of the ancient world with modern receptions and relevance, the results of not only a restless pedagogical process of revision and iteration of existing courses, but also strategic re-envisioning of courses and development of new courses to address the changing landscape and needs of higher education at Loyola Marymount University and beyond.
In terms of nuts and bolts, Dr. Zacharia’s syllabi and assignments provide abundant evidence of the detailed approach to every activity; students are given exceptionally clear instructions, reading questions, rubrics, and articulations of desired outcomes. Both those with more and less Classics experience benefit from her clarity and detail, which minimizes the invisible curriculum and thus supports learners with a diversity of experiences. Her interrogation of identity in both classical texts and in the connections between the ancient world and the modern provides students with helpful models for grappling with questions of identity and diversity in the modern world. Outside of class too, Professor Zacharia has served both as an inspirational mentor for those aiming to join our field, and connected students with internships working with the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival.
In Dr. Zacharia’s courses, careful scaffolding regularly leads to intensive active and applied activities, including Reacting to the Past modules. Dr. Zacharia is also responsible for co-developing the classroom game “Enthralled” in which students engage with the plot of Euripides’ Bacchae by questioning major characters at the end of every scene. Add in a bit of randomness, and a healthy dose of deliberation, and students are given robust opportunities to engage with Euripides in ways that are not only engaging and fun, but also support thoughtful grappling with the play’s most important themes, and the particular manner in which Greek tragedy wrestles with questions of fact and belief.
Professor Zacharia has managed to find the sweet spot of holding students to high standards while also supporting them to achieve those standards. It is a rare and remarkable achievement to have students testify both to the harshness of an instructor’s critique of their work and also describe that instructor as “sweet” and “caring” and praise her willingness to help. As one student said, “Professor Zacharia’s projects always force you to go above and beyond and keep the information learned in your memory after class is over. Her teaching style can be tough, but it is always rewarding.” Another student echoes the sentiment: “Even though her teaching method could be tough at times, it brings out the best in each student. Her harshness does not spring out [of] insecurities about the student’s ability, but rather confidence that from then on they will be a better scholar.”
As her associate dean describes: “Prof. Zacharia is a perfect example of what the instruction of Classics can be in a 21st century university,” noting that she “continues to show our university that the field Classics is living, vibrant, and accessible to all of our students.”
The SCS is delighted to honor Katerina Zacharia with the 2023 Award for Excellence in Teaching of the Classics at the College and University Level.
