Classroom drive scores teaching award
Contact:
DD Kugler, 778.782.4688, 604.216.0037; ddkugler@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca
A theatre professor with Simon Fraser University’s Contemporary Arts has earned an SFU 2010 Excellence in Teaching award for his drive in and outside of the classroom.
DD Kugler, a Vancouver resident, isn’t kidding when he says teaching is his life.
Students, past and present, commend Kugler for his passion and dedication. He’s at his desk by 6:30 a.m. most days to deal with administrative work so that he’s free to chat with students when they drop in.
After hours, he’s often supporting former students by attending their performances, helping them with their writing, or sponsoring their ambitions.
“We get up in the morning and know that he is already at school, preparing, drinking coffee, refilling the candy jar, setting out Kleenex, sending us articles and links that lead to further discovery and discussion,” says one student.
Yet at the same time, he’s a difficult taskmaster with a foreboding reputation.
Students will initially avoid his theatre history courses, or delay them, and he admits they are a lot of work. He gives a quiz in every class, and even expects students to know their classmates’ names. He gives a quiz on that, too.
“I have high expectations,” acknowledges Kugler. “But, ultimately, the students are kind of honoured by those expectations. They accumulate a sense of fulfilment that they did it — that they can read it, understand it, think about it, talk about it, write about it, and defend it.”
Surprisingly, Kugler discovered his passion for teaching later in life, after stints as an editor, a fisherman and — after formal theatre training that began at age 36 — as an artistic director and a production dramaturg.
He joined SFU Contemporary Arts in 1998 at age 52. Now approaching 65, he is associate dean of undergraduate studies for the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, and says he has no plan to retire in the near future.
“This is my thing,” he says. “Teaching is what I do.”
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