Photo by Chris Meyer
 “His never-ending passion for learning and teaching is contagious and incredibly motivating. He, more than anyone else, gave me the gift of confidence.” — Melody Stiles, M.S.W., IU School of Social Work |
Eric Wright first discovered the joy of teaching when he was a graduate student on the IU Bloomington campus in the late 1980s.
He was an associate instructor teaching undergraduate sociology classes, and his superb lectures and class discussions were recognized by the Department of Sociology’s 1988 Edwin H. Sutherland Award for excellence in teaching.
The award marked the beginning of a journey into the art and scholarship of teaching that has brought Wright to a new vision of teaching: one that reaches far beyond the classroom and actively engages learners to think critically and analyze the social world they inhabit.
When his department obtained a grant to completely redesign its introductory sociology course in 1999, Wright volunteered to teach the pilot. The course was exceptional in two ways: it linked with an English course, Elementary Composition; and it used technology to enhance learning. Wright attended a seminar on the use of technology in teaching offered by Andrew Gavrin, associate professor of physics at IUPUI and a co-developer of “Just in Time Teaching,” a method to engage students through Web assignments prior to the classroom lectures.
When Gavrin spoke to Wright a little more than a year after that seminar and asked about the course, he was amazed. “I found,” Gavrin said, “that he had not only adopted the method, but he had taken it far beyond what I had described, combining his expertise in group dynamics with the use of technology to produce an entirely new and highly innovative method for engaging students and promoting collaboration.”
Since that first departmental award at IUB, Wright has garnered wider recognition for his teaching: the university-wide Lieber Memorial Teaching Associate Award in 1993; the IU Trustees Teaching Award in 2001 and induction into the IU Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching in 2002.
One student who was brought into research work as an undergraduate, Mathew Gayman, said: “Prior to meeting Dr. Wright and having him as a teacher/mentor, I was relatively uninterested in furthering my education. Since then, I have earned my master’s degree and continue my educational goal of earning a Ph.D.”
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