Each year, SFU recognizes teaching excellence at the university, choosing three SFU instructors or faculty members to receive $2,000 cash awards. SFU News will profile each of them, beginning with DD Kugler in this issue. See them on video: at.sfu.ca/XmwBqc

When DD Kugler says teaching is his life, he isn’t kidding.

A professor of theatre with the School for the Contemporary Arts, he’s at his desk by 6:30 am 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.

So it’s not surprising that so many students, past and present, nominated him for an SFU 2010 Excellence in Teaching award, citing his passion and dedication.

As one student said, “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.”

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,” he acknowledges. “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’s School for the 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.”