Professor wins national teaching award
For the fourth time in five years, a USU professor has been named a Carnegie Professor of the Year.
Jim Cangelosi, a professor in the department of mathematics and statistics, is the 11th USU professor to receive the award.
According to the Carnegie Foundation, the award acknowledges outstanding undergraduate instructors across the country.
Cangelosi said despite the prestige this award is meant to sustain, what he is most honored by is the nomination from fellow faculty members and friends.
“I am very humbled by the people who have befriended me and said ‘Yeah, Jim, we want you to be here,'” Cangelosi said. “I am just blown away how gracious people have been, especially the students. The students have, over the years, done stuff like thrown parties for me. I have just learned so much from them.”
Cangelosi went on to say the award doesn’t make the professor.
“It’s like today, the trophy becomes the goal, rather than the feat that the trophy represents,” Cangelosi said. “If people need those kinds of things to motivate them to do their job, then they aren’t any good anyway.”
Cangelosi said he believes what should be encouraged, instead of trophy acquisition, is unity and collective purpose among the staff.
“It should be about what we do, not who we are,” he said. “This idea of picking out one person as the outstanding — the definite article — is stupid. We should all be one team. I just don’t like awards. If you have a winner, then you have a bunch of losers. I just don’t think it helps our spirit to point out one or two people and go ‘Oh, isn’t he great.’ There is an attitude today that we should compete, but we should all be in this together.”
He said his motivation to become a teacher didn’t come the way it does for a lot of other professors.
“I hated school,” he said. “I got good grades, but it wasn’t because I liked math.”
He said it wasn’t until one of his professors opened his eyes to the possibilities that math could bring that he finally began to enjoy the field. Now his main hope is to pass that love on to other students.
“We’re all in this together,” Cangelosi said. “In mathematics, it’s not true because someone told you, it’s true because you reasoned it out together.”
Jason Betts, a biochemistry major in one of Cangelosi’s calculus classes, said this approach to teaching is what makes Cangelosi a favorite in the math department.
“Most math professors teach on a level far above my head,” Betts said. “They teach it like I am an expert in math, rather than a student. Jim (Cangelosi) explains things on a more basic level, but still helps us to understand the complexities of math.”
Brock Rohloff, another calculus student majoring in mechanical engineering and writing, said Cangelosi’s ability to involve the students in lectures and keep each hour energized is a key reason his class stays interesting.
“Other calculus professors like to lecture,” Rohloff said. “They don’t like to involve the class as much. Jim likes to pull people in and say ‘Listen to this.’ He also has a very good sense of humor. He is not afraid to express himself, and so he keeps the class alive — people don’t get deadened in the class. You can feel the class kind of stays moving, and that’s something he’s very good at.”
– brianna.b@aggiemail.usu.edu