This year’s College of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award celebrates the work of Professor Teresa Hubbard, Studio Art, Department of Art and Art History, who was selected by a panel of senior faculty members in the college.
Hubbard summarized her teaching philosophy in three categories:
- To bring out: Hubbard utilizes the Latin root of educate: educe–which means to bring out. Hubbard approaches all of her students, subject matter and courses by not seeing her students as empty vessels. To her, every student possesses life experiences that can benefit their classmates, contribute to class discussion and help her continue to grow and learn as a teacher.
- Work, work and work: Hubbard describes work as experimentation that always involves failure, and that failure is a beginning, not an end. Work takes practice and repetition. Repetition will always lead to something, and work instills the best kind of discipline: self-discipline.
- “Education as a practice of freedom”: Hubbard engages strategies of social and emotional learning in all subject matters as part of instilling self-reliance in her students. She is inspired by the possibility of “Education as a practice of freedom,” from the late poet, activist and educator, bell hooks. In Teaching to Transgress, hooks forcefully outlined an approach to education as a practice of freedom—a practice that is grounded in social and emotional learning as the most effective way for students to think critically.
Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion John Yancey, was one of Hubbard’s nominators for the Distinguished Teaching Award. Yancey says that Hubbard is “among our most highly sought-after teachers on both graduate and undergraduate levels. She is an amazing resource and inspiration to our students. She brings not only extensive expertise, but also considerable prestige to our academic programs.” Yancey describes Hubbard’s class culture as one of excellence, with energetic rigor and success, and he notes that each student working to their highest standards is not exceptional in Hubbard’s classes, but is actually expected.
Hubbard holds the William and Bettye Nowlin Endowed Professorship in Photography. She is Co-Area Head of the Photography & Media Area and is an alumna of the UT Department of Art and Art History.