r. Edward Chung delivered the second annual Kreider Prize Lecture on the evening of Oct. 13, taking the opportunity to share his passion for teaching with the campus community.
The associate professor of marketing was selected in the spring of 2016 to receive the Kreider Prize for Teaching by a student panel and members of the Professional Development Committee. The award came as a surprise to Chung.
Every seat in the Susquehanna Room was filled.
“I was actually struggling with [choosing] what to talk about,” Chung said after the lecture. He wanted to remain humble but share the secret behind the success of his teaching techniques. He titled his speech “I Yam What I Yam and Dat’s All That I Yam.”
Chung divided his speech into three distinct parts: Practice, Inspirations and Glitches. The first section detailed the “real world” strategies and anecdotes he employs in the classroom—a skill the Kreider Prize Committee lauded in their congratulatory statement to Chung: “Alumni and students appreciated his use of personal experiences to enhance class lessons, making them more applicable to the real world.”
“I don’t want people to just memorize things,” Chung said. “I want them to understand and challenge things.” He emphasized the importance of teaching students to get out of their comfort zones.
Chung values bravery and taking risks in the name of following passions. “Why would I want to keep doing things I’m already good at?” he asked. Expanding oneself for the sake of following whatever it is one finds enjoyable is at the core of his pedagogy.
“Don’t take yourself too seriously, but take what you do seriously,” he said.
The “Inspirations” segment of his presentation further demonstrated his values: Chung most looks up to those who are “passionate to the point of risking their lives,” he said. He most respects people who treat everybody as a human being. He quoted William Carlos Williams: “My surface is myself. Under which to witness, youth is buried. Roots? Everybody has roots.”
Chung concluded his talk by addressing the “glitches” he believes he has made along the way while pursuing his passions and striving to teach others to follow theirs. He thinks that his major flaws as a professor come from rejecting some common principles of academe. He does not support doing “pointless things” solely for the sake of fitting into a specific area of the world of academics, emphasizing how meaningful he finds following what clicks in both heart and head. He commented that the day he stops caring is the day he stops teaching.
Before earning his doctorate from the Schulich School of Business at Canada’s York University, Chung worked at Mobil and Sun Life. He has more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles published under his name.
The Kreider Prize winner is selected from the group of full-time professors who have taught at the College for at least three years. Those eligible for consideration must be nominated by people in at least three of the four categories: students, alumni, staff members and faculty members. The award is named after Dr. J. Kenneth Kreider, professor of history emeritus, and Carroll L. Kreider, professor of business emerita.
