Rosemary Pennington | Sept. 30, 2007
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| Photo by Crista Chapman |
| Associate professor Claude Cookman is the 2007 Gretchen Kemp Teaching Fellow, the second time he’s won the award. |
“It’s a great joy to watch students grow intellectually and socially and ethically,” said Cookman. “I am a humanist. I think teaching is one of the great helping professions – that we can help other people do this, realize their own unique potential.”
For almost two decades Cookman has taught a wide variety of visual communication classes at the School of Journalism. He made the leap to academia after stints as copy editor at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, graphics editor at The Miami Herald and picture editor at The Louisville Times.
Cookman’s ability to turn his professional experience into education led to his being named the 2007 Gretchen Kemp Teaching Fellow, an honor created through a gift from former journalism professor Gretchen Kemp to reward outstanding teaching in the school.
Kemp taught at the school from 1947-1974, starting as director for the High School Journalism Institute and retiring as a professor. It comes with a $10,000 stipend. In keeping with Kemp’s philosophy of putting money back into the school, Cookman will use the award to do something he’s wanted to do for awhile: Create a scholarship.
“I’ve been trying for 10 years to endow a scholarship,” Cookman said. “I’ve been putting money away here and there. This award money will take it over the top and I hope the School of Journalism will begin awarding it next spring.”
The last three School of Journalism Kemp Fellows and two others IU professionals from outside the school determine winners. In reviewing Cookman’s dossier, one judge highlighted the professor’s teaching evaluations, noting the "effusive praise from students.”
Senior Tyra Robertson, who’s currently taking J464 Infographics with Cookman, said the praise is well deserved.
“He gets to know the students in his class as well as he can,” Robertson said. “He really tries to get to know who we are as people.”
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| Photo by Crista Chapman |
| "I think teaching is one of the great helping professions – that we can help other people do this, realize their own unique potential,” Cookman said. |
“He is the most caring teacher I’ve ever witnessed in a classroom,” she said. “He cares so much about the progress of his students. He wants them to do well.”
Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies Amy Reynolds sat on the committee that reviewed Kemp nominees. She also team-taught with Cookman early in her career at IU. She said the students aren’t the only ones lucky to have Cookman around; the rest of the faculty is as well.
“I was really lucky to have that experience,” Reynolds said. “To be able to watch someone do it so well. He thinks and cares deeply. The students, and the school, are fortunate to have him.”
Cookman says he feels fortunate to be teaching at IU and to have won the Kemp award – again. He won in 1993, just three years after he arrived at the School of Journalism.
“I never met Gretchen Kemp,” Cookman said. “I know people who have and they tell me she set high standards for her students. I try to do that as well, to make it rigorous; I think that increases and enhances true learning.”
In addition to Cookman, associate professor Jon Dilts and assistant professor Tony Fargo also were nominated for this year’s Kemp award. While Cookman may have won, all three nominees impressed the judges with their teaching dossiers.
One judge wrote, "It’s not always easy to competently translate [professional] experience into good instruction, but student evaluations indicate that Professors Cookman, Dilts, and Fargo have attained real mastery at bridging the conceptual and applied worlds of journalism for our IU students."
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