University Award for Excellence in Teaching
Sumner Richman, 1992
"Sumner Richman: For thirty-five years, whether it be at the frigid shores of Green Bay, or in a murky mangrove swamp, or within the shark-infested sea trenches of the Cayman Islands, you have taught your students that the only way to get to the bottom of things is to dive right in.
In your lab, your classroom, your office, and your home, on tropical Caribbean beaches and in frozen Wisconsin bogs, generations of Lawrentians have discovered your energetic and demanding commitment to their personal lives and their professional development. Because you have the selfless ability to treat even your first-year students as your peers and colleagues, with all the expectation, commitment, and generosity such treatment entails, you have guided an extraordinary number of them into productive careers such as aquatic scientists, an achievement that is widely recognized by the scientific community at large and best exemplified at the meetings of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, where so many of your former students convene each year to read papers about their latest discoveries. Fiercely devoted to your discipline, and utterly intrepid in the pursuit of it, you have become a model for those whose most creative and productive efforts, long after they leave Lawrence, are motivated by their desire to produce something worthy of your respect and approval.
Most of all, because you understand that there is no boundary between teaching and life, you have discovered the intimate balance between hard work and hard play. You are able to delight your students with a gesticulating and precise pantomime of the feeding Daphnia, the small aquatic animal to which you have devoted so much of your research, and to expound upon the intricacies of lobster appendages even as you prepare to devour them. That you also send the president postcards featuring various forms of edible shellfish is a hostile provocation, to be sure, but does not negate these accolades.
Sub, for your keen sense of the limits of your students and your science, and your ability to push both to the edge of those limits and beyond, we are delighted to honor you today with the 1992 Excellent Teaching Award."