United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award
Overview
The University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, established by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of The United Methodist Church, is conferred at colleges and universities historically affiliated with it. The award recognizes outstanding faculty members for their dedication and contributions to the learning arts and to the institution.
The Division of Higher Education of the Board of Higher Education and Ministry of The United Methodist Church specifies that the $2,000 unrestricted stipend be awarded in a public ceremony. This has traditionally occurred at the New Faculty Reception in mid-September. Applications may be submitted to the Office of the Provost during the month of July. The Division also requests that women and ethnic minorities be given high priority in the selection process.
2005 United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year
Charles Rzepka
Introduction given by Boston University President Robert A. Brown
September 15, 2005
When describing today's honoree, people use words and phrases like, "a formidable classroom presence", "deeply humane", "erudite", and "a curious mixture of disarming friendliness and strict discipline." One former student writes "what truly distinguishes [him] as a teacher is his ability to challenge students to see beyond their own experiences, to use imagination to encounter something, or someone, new." This student continues, "[by] providing context, shepherding discussion, correcting misapprehension, [and] encouraging insight: he forcefully but joyfully invites students into experiences that move and disconcert them as often as they entertain and amuse." As a scholar, our awardee's work has been praised as "making a lasting contribution" to his discipline and has put him in the forefront of Romantic studies, cited often by colleagues. A scholar specializing in British Romanticism and detective and crime fiction, this year's recipient of the United Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year award has shared his own sense of wonder related to literature with undergraduate and graduate students for 26 years. I am very pleased to confer the 2006 University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award on Professor Charles Rzepka.
Dr. Rzepka is Professor of English at Boston University. He is the author of Detective Fiction: Cultural History of Literature (Polity Press, September 2005), Sacramental Commodities: Gift, Text, and the Sublime in De Quincey's Confessions (University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), and The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats which won the 1984 Thomas J. Wilson Prize for a first book. Professor Rzepka has delivered numerous lectures in the U.S. and around the world on topics ranging from Poe and the birth of detection to Wordsworth and secular history to the poetry of John Clare. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and fellowships including the 2004 Keats-Shelley Association Distinguished Scholar Award and an NEH Fellowship. Before coming to Boston University in 1979, Professor Rzepka earned his Ph.D. in English at the University of California at Berkeley.
Professor Rzepka teaches all levels of courses, ranging from the "Survey of British Literature II" required of all English majors and minors, to the graduate course entitled "Introduction to Recent Critical Theory and Method". A former student asserts that "the classroom for him is not merely a venue for the communication of knowledge, but a sacred space set apart for the formation of [an] intellectual community." Undergraduate students fulfilling distribution requirements and doctoral students engaged in dissertation research alike acknowledge Professor Rzepka's vast intellect, unwavering enthusiasm, and deep commitment to the study of literature.
But the classroom is not the only venue where Dr. Rzepka acts as teacher and mentor. He is the founder of the Boston University Romantics Symposium, a bi-monthly gathering at the BU Pub of faculty and students from BU and other area institutions to discuss various texts on Romanticism. One participant notes "that spirit of open-mindedness and passion for critical knowledge will perhaps be Professor Rzepka's legacy to his students."
And so, in recognition of his deep commitment to scholarship and his enduring commitment to bringing literature alive for his students, I am very pleased to honor Professor Charles Rzepka as the recipient of the 2006 Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year award.
