Matthew S. Brim, Lieber memorial teaching associate award

Matthew S. Brim Doctoral student in English IU Bloomington

IU Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm, Brim and Interim President Gerald Bepko at the Founders Day ceremony

Jonathan Elmer, associate professor of English and American studies, said that he comes away from visits to Brim’s classes with the feeling that he has seen something genuinely new and surprising: “It has to do with the truly unusual combination in Matt of a desire to challenge his students, shake them up with a serene ease of manner that invites them to take up the challenge.”

Brim’s dedication to student success extends beyond the classroom. He holds office hours at cafés and communicates with his students nearly every day, either face to face or via E mail. Students praise his preparation for class, ability to explain material, enthusiasm, fostering discussion, respect for diversity and genuine interest in them.

Brim has taught the introductory composition course for freshmen and served on the department’s composition committee. On the basis of his extraordinary teaching skills, he was selected to serve as a consultant to first-time teachers of the course.

His pedagogical interests include collaborative course design and how to teach diversity issues to homogenous student populations.

Susan Gubar, Distinguished Professor of English, considers Brim the best graduate student instructor she has observed in almost 30 years at IU. “What strikes me as unusual about Matt’s teaching is his maturity, especially in one respect: he sees each and every session as an opportunity to impress upon students what they will set out to learn from reading and writing; what steps will be used to get there; and how, at the end, they should take a moment to assess what they have just achieved.”

Matthew Brim shakes up his students ‘with a serene ease of manner that invites them to take up the challenge.’