University Award for Excellence in Teaching
Franklin Doeringer, 1999
"Frank Doeringer, since arriving at this Midwestern metropolis on the Fox from that hinterland outpost on the Hudson--Columbia University--you have ever been on Lawrence's cutting edge. In truth, for some time you were rather alone on that edge. As the History Department's sole non-western specialist, you were to fill enormous tracts of both time and space well beyond your own specialty, which is ancient China: all of East Asia, including Japan, has been yours, as has been all of history, from ancient to modern. For several generations of Lawrence students, you have covered that ground with the grace and equanimity of Emperor Yao or Shun.
More recently, you have pushed that edge out still further. As a prime mover of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, you have helped make Lawrence a leader among those liberal arts colleges far-sighted enough to provide serious instruction in the languages and cultures that have a rich and powerful history and that will prove important to us all in the next century. This new endeavor, moreover, has also provided you--to your own oft-expressed delighted--with the privilege of being, at least for a time, emperor of two departments at once. Your colleagues in both have been deeply satisfied with your reign and with your deft leadership of these programs.
Your benevolent dominion has been felt not only at Lawrence's cutting edge, but at its core. When the Freshman Studies Flagship was expanded from one term to two in 1987, you were its first captain; when the time came to review and renew the Program in 1996, it was your steady but unobtrusive hand that helped steer the ship into safe waters. Indeed, whether exciting the interest of Lawrence students through new courses on 'The Global Century' and 'The Advent of the Atom Bomb' or undergraduates nationwide through a two-volume textbook, Discovering the Global Past, which you co-authored for Houghton-Mifflin in 1997, your intellectual reach has quite literally encompassed the globe.
For the power and value of these and many other contributions to the educational mission of the college, we are delighted to recognize you today with the Excellent Teaching Award for 1999."