The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate will present Steven Cohen, a lecturer in the education and American Studies department, with the Professor of the Year Award today at 1 p.m. in the Remis Sculpture Court.
The award singles out one professor each year who, in the eyes of the Senate, receives the warmest praise from the student body.
The selection process begins with the distribution of a nomination form that asks students to name their single favorite professor and the reasons why the educator is their pick for the award.
The Senate's five-person Education Committee then uses the results of the survey to gauge overall student opinion. This year the committee received around 800 nominations for more than 100 different professors, according to its chair, TCU Senator and junior Amanda Richardson.
The committee considers each nominee based on both the quantity and quality of the nominations.
"It's not always about numbers; it's about the quality of the student nominations," Richardson said.
But she said that this year there was no conflict between numbers and quality.
"It just so happened that Steven Cohen received twice [as many] nominations [as] any of the other nominees, and his nominations were of the highest quality," she said. The decision was accordingly unanimous.
Cohen expressed a mix of thankfulness and uncertainty in reaction to the committee's decision.
"I'm quite gratified, but I don't know what it is that I've done really to deserve this," he said. "And if I did, I would keep doing it."
As such, the award surprised Cohen. "You do your job as a teacher and you don't really think about [receiving] a particular honor for [it]," he said.
A veteran high school teacher of 25 years now in his sixth year at Tufts, Cohen has published articles exploring how to teach historical situations such as the Vietnam War, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the Holocaust, according to his profile on the American studies department's Web site.
This semester, Cohen is teaching three courses at Tufts: School and Society, Field Experience in Education, and Practice of Teaching: History and Political Science/Political Philosophy.
TCU Senate President Mitch Robinson emphasized the award's value. "The Professor of the Year Award is one of the most important awards that the Senate gives out," he said.
Cohen was Robinson's pre-major advisor. "I honestly think that there is no better example of what it means to teach ... with passion," Robinson said.
"He exemplifies what it means to be a professor here at Tufts," he said. "I can go on about him for days."
This is the first year that a nomination form for the award was included in the annual Senate Survey, which students were able to complete and submit electronically. "In past years we've tried to do it through [a] paper ballot ... and that process hasn't nearly gotten us as many as 800 [nominations]," Robinson said.
The Senate first presented the Professor of the Year Award in 1999. No professor has ever received it twice.
-Rob Silverblatt contributed reporting to this article.
