Marketing Professor Lois Smith earns Regents Teaching Excellence Award

August 22, 2007

Lois Smith

Marketing Professor Lois Smith '82 can now add UW System Board of Regents Teaching Excellence Award to her list of accolades. The award comes on the heels of earning UW-Whitewater's highest teaching honor in 2006, the W.P. Roseman Excellence in Teaching Award, as well as the University Academic Advising Award.

Nominated by Interim Chancellor Richard Telfer, and selected from 27 other UW System faculty nominees, the UW-Whitewater marketing professor is very appreciative. "I feel honored of course, but I know that without all the support and mentoring I received on the UW-Whitewater campus, I would not have had the sorts of opportunities that led to this award."

The marketing professor added, "My UW-Whitewater colleagues have given me tremendous opportunities for growth and service."

Among her many contributions to the university, Smith has:

1. taught many different courses on campus;
2. advised student organizations including Pi Sigma Epsilon, a national fraternity in marketing, sales management and selling;
3. coordinated an exchange program with Arnhem Business School in the Netherlands for more than a decade;
4. interacted with students in residence halls and through a learning community;
5. given her time to college assessment programs;
6. helped launch a college teaching mentoring program;
7. and with the help of LEARN Center, talked with others across campus about what makes for "good teaching."

"Without all these opportunities and this support, I would not have received acknowledgement," she said.

Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor John Hajdu Heyer said, "This is wonderful news for UW-Whitewater. Our campus has an interesting history with this award. My understanding is that Robert Burrows was the first recipient in 1990, followed by John Kozlowicz in 1991. Languages and Literature received the Regents' departmental award in 1999, but Smith is the first of our faculty to receive this distinction since that very strong start when the Regents Teaching Excellence Award Program was created."

While she has had the opportunity to expand her teaching and learning boundaries Smith tries to keep these objectives in mind for all her students no matter where their "classrooms" may be:

1. Teach them so that they can teach themselves.
2. Teach them so they can learn from each other.
3. Teach them to be open to new ideas, to want to learn.
4. Teach them to question what they know.
5. Teach them to take on challenges, to go beyond their level of comfort.
6. Teach them so that they are ready for the world of work but also for life outside of work.

She said, "The award gives me energy and enthusiasm. The award also demonstrates how much UW-Whitewater values teaching and how faculty can express those values in so many different ways."

Smith has an MBA in marketing from UW-Whitewater.