Contact Program Contact Kathryn Holcomb Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (765) 455-9417 Media Contact Mary Ellen Stephenson OCM (765) 455-9414 mestephe@iuk.edu

Holcomb wins Claude Rich Teaching Award

Kathryn Holcomb, Ph.D.

KOKOMO, Ind.—An Indiana University Kokomo faculty selection committee unanimously selected Associate Professor of Psychology Kathryn M. Holcomb, Ph.D., to receive the 2007 Claude Rich Award. This $3,000 prize is considered the campus’s most prestigious teaching award.

In his announcement of the award, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Stuart Green quoted the committee’s report: “Dr. Holcomb’s dossier provided thorough, detailed evidence of consistently excellent teaching and met all three criteria for the award: dedication to one’s teaching mission, depth of understanding of subject area . . . , and ability to communicate with, work with, and arouse the intellectual curiosity of students. In her dossier, Dr. Holcomb notes that ‘Good teaching takes a lot of time.’ She clearly takes the time to do good teaching.”

Holcomb has offered 10 different courses in her seven years of teaching at IU Kokomo. Several, such as Psychology of Gender and Ethnicity, Health Psychology, Planning Your Psychology Career, and Psychology of Law, were first-time classes for IU Kokomo created by Holcomb. While it takes time to develop whole new courses, she explained that she does it to keep herself “fresh and enthusiastic” as a teacher. She often integrates some of the material she developed into other, more general psychology courses “so that students can learn how the theories apply to real-life example."

Holcomb’s commitment to teaching has been recognized further by her recent induction into IU’s FACET (Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching) and her selection to receive a 2007 Trustees’ Teaching Award.

Holcomb “engages in a number in several different lines of scholarship of teaching, including students’ beliefs about psychology as a science, peer review of teaching, student help-seeking, and relationships between recitation attendance, meta-cognition, and exam performance among general psychology students,” Green said.

“In earning this recognition, Dr. Holcomb joins other Claude Rich Award honorees who have consistently raised the bar for excellence in teaching and learning on the Kokomo campus,” Green stated. “Our Claude Rich winners stand out for their pedagogical innovation and deep commitment to student engagement and learning.”

Green conveyed his thanks to the Claude Rich Committee “for the difficult work they do on this committee” and “for representing their colleagues’ dedication to the centrality of teaching and learning on the Kokomo campus.”