Long Named Texas Professor of the Year

What does it take to be one of the best university professors in Texas? Elizabeth Long might have a clue. She has been named the 2003 Texas Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

The U.S. Professors of the Year program salutes the most outstanding undergraduate instructors in the country—those who excel as teachers and influence the lives and careers of their students. An associate professor of sociology, Long was selected from among nearly 400 top professors in the United States and was honored in November at an awards luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and at an evening reception on Capitol Hill.

Long teaches courses on the sociology of gender, the sociology of culture, contemporary sociological theory, the history of sociology, feminist social thought, and qualitative methods. Her teaching style is a combination of methods she observed as a student. “I learned from one of my college teachers that you don’t have to be a stellar performer to be a really good teacher,” Long says, recalling one professor who used to stare out the window, collecting his thoughts, before presenting “absolutely fascinating material” and another professor who handled discussion classes very well but wasn’t a good lecturer. “Part of the task of being a good teacher,” Long says, “is to figure out what your strengths are and use them to your advantage.”

She cites the high caliber of students at Rice as one of the factors that contributes to her love of teaching. “Just last week, after a particularly good class discussion,” Long says, “one of my colleagues and I were talking about what an incredible privilege it is to be in a classroom with students who are so alive and eager and involved and smart and reflective as Rice students tend to be.”

Long thrives on enabling students to make a connection between abstract ideas and people’s lives. “It’s really exciting to see students think sociologically and understand a problem historically,” she says, adding that it’s also fun to work with students who are convinced they don’t have a research topic or question that interests them. “Once you get them to dig a little deeper, they find that they have many questions,” she says. “Then they have to figure out which one is their calling.”

Rice Department of Sociology chair William Martin zeroed in on Long’s one-on-one attention to students in his nomination letter. “Whether working with our finest students or with those whose abilities to read, analyze, organize, and write are not finely honed,” Martin says, “she is able to adapt her approach to the needs of the student and the situation, with the result that a substantial number of students regard her as their primary mentor at Rice.”

Martin notes that, at the beginning of her classes, Long has been known to take photographs of students and lead simple introductory exercises to help her get to know the students and to help them get to know each other as well. “She follows this up with generous sharing of her time,” he says, “and consistently has students waiting outside her office to see her.” That sharing of time presents the biggest challenge to Long. “It’s hard to figure out how to fit a family life, a writing life, a university life, and a teaching life into one day,” she says.

But she seems to have mastered the challenge. At Rice, in addition to teaching, she chairs the Scholarships and Awards Committee, serves as an undergraduate adviser for the Department of Sociology, and is a member of the Education Committee and the Steering Committee for the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. This year, her book Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life was published, and she edits and writes for a number of professional journals and gives lectures to professional organizations and other universities. And she still finds time for her husband and son.

Long has already received Rice’s highest recognition for teaching—the George R. Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching—and is a three-time recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching and winner of other awards from students and alumni.

—B. J. Almond