Young Teacher Award
Carol Lawton, 1982
"Each year at Commencement, Lawrence honors a teacher with less than seven years' service who, upon recent evaluation, has shown those qualities that indicate promise for excellence in teaching, namely, strong potential for an impressive career, superb teaching with well-acclaimed scholarship or creative work, a deep concern for the development of one's skills as a teacher, and a commitment to the learning or one's students.
In the relatively short period of time since she abandoned the agora for Appleton, Carol Lawton has brought her considerable energy and talent to bear on the creation of a sound and engaging art history program. As a generalist, she has familiarized out students with the techniques and languages of criticism even as she has introduced them to the high points of Western art from antiquity to the present. As a specialist, her interest in the art of ancient Greece--she is a scholar of document reliefs--has added a new dimension to our offerings in classical studies.
In all her work, Carol has been attentive to the many connections that can be drawn between works of art and the complex intellectual and social settings in which they originate; and her students laud her ability to make such relationships real and exciting. Though she spends a lot of time teaching in the dark--showing slides in the Worcester Art Center auditorium--Carol Lawton has, in true Lawrence fashion, managed to shed 'light, more light' on the vast heritage of Western art to an appreciative community.
Carol, we are delighted to honor you with this award as an outstanding young teacher of the Lawrence faculty."