Marlise Riffel Named 2009 Minnesota Professor of the Year
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) have named Marlise Riffel of Lake Superior College the 2009 Minnesota Professor of the Year.
Faculty member Marlise Riffel with students, right to left, Michelle House, Elise Verhel, Vicky Shaeffer, and Samantha Krause.
The U.S. Professors of the Year program, created in 1981, is the only national initiative specifically designed to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring. Riffel was selected from more than 300 top professors in the United States. This year, there are 38 state winners. Riffel was selected from faculty members nominated by colleges and universities throughout the country.
Following 10 years of work in the human services field, Riffel began her teaching career in Rochester, Minnesota in 1983. Initially, she taught traditional classes, but eventually taught the evening and weekend community-focused classes for the sociology department in order to work with nontraditional students. “I absolutely love sociology and there is nothing I’d rather do than teach. My job is to create a desire to know and then to facilitate the development of students’ skills in finding out,” said Riffel.
CASE president John Lippincott congratulates Marlise Riffel on her award.
As a result of her community teaching, the local newspaper editor asked Riffel to write a weekly column, and her sociology-women’s studies column ran for five years in the Rochester Post-Bulletin. In 1991, she was honored by her colleagues at Rochester Community College with the Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year Award. That same year, Riffel and her family moved north.
Riffel started teaching at Duluth Community College in 1991 (now Lake Superior College) where she pioneered the use of computers in the sociology classroom to teach students research skills. “If I can make the sociological perspective contagious, students can catch it. Once they’ve caught it, they’ll want the tools — critical analysis, verifying, and using sociological research — that put them in charge of their own continued learning. The way I teach tools is to use them with students — this transforms sociology from an abstract theory to a strategy for tackling life’s puzzles and provides a new perspective on students’ everyday experiences.”
Congressman Oberstar congratulates Marlise Riffel on her award in Washington, D.C.
During her 26 years of teaching, she has taught 16 different undergraduate courses, connecting with 160 students each semester. “As a student of Marlise’s, the wonderful thing is that I know if I truly need help with something she is just the right teacher to go to. She is smart in more subjects that just sociology and never places herself up on a pedestal like some college professors might do,” said former student Hannah Packer. “I can’t even count how many times she had students share their personal experiences in class because she was so truly fascinated by them. I have not known one student who didn’t appreciate Marlise’s straightforward but truthful approach to teaching.”
Riffel and her LSC colleagues eventually designed a “soc lab” with moveable tables and chairs for group work surrounded by computers for each student along the classroom walls. “This team-based learning is incredible,” said current student Debra Burmeister. “The classroom itself is perfectly set up. With my other classes, it’s impossible to get the intimate feel sitting behind rows of computers. I wish more classrooms were set up this way.”
“A good teacher is in love with her subject,” commented Riffel. “She models for students how to wonder, how to struggle with conflicting data or polarized attitudes, how to settle for more questions than answers. To ask the questions of ‘how’ and ‘why,’ because students can always look up what, where, who, and when, but they are invited to think and process with questions of how and why. A good teacher finds exciting news or research results from his discipline and shares them with students. A good teacher changes techniques and resources and assessments each term based on feedback from the previous term’s students. A good teacher is still learning, and changing, and learning more.”
Riffel uses a variety of formats, from face-to-face teaching in the classroom to online learning to a hybrid/blended course. “I’m personally aware of her dedication to her students and their learning,” said faculty member Kent Richards. “Marlise ‘gets it’ that assessment of student learning is really about improving what we do in the classroom. When the majority of our colleagues still had little idea what academic assessment was all about, Marlise already had all of her course activities and assessment measures aligned with her course outcomes.”
In 2007, Lake Superior College nominated her for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities’ Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Teaching. “Marlise not only inspires her students but her creative teaching methods also inspire her colleagues to experience teaching in new, innovative ways,” explained Hanna Erpestad, LSC dean of liberal arts and sciences.
Congratulations. Well deserved!
Way to go, Marlise.
This is well deserved! A hearty congratulations to Marlise on this prestigious award. She is a dedicated and engaging educator.
This is fabuous Marlise! You must be so pleased. I know you do what you do simple because you love it and the students, but it is nice to see recognition like this…so well deserved.
Congratulations, Marlise! You inspire all of us. I love working with the team-based learning approach you taught us last spring. It’s so effective!! The students love it.
Thank you all. I am honored and very grateful. The most exciting part of this process was spending a day in Washington D.C. with college teachers from around the country who are HIGH on teaching!
Marlise, I’ve never met a student of yours that didn’t say,” Wow. She’s amazing.” I’m thrilled to be so close to such humble greatness.
Congrats!! We are extremely lucky to have you as part of the lake Superior College team.
Sincerely,
Carl Crawford
There wasn’t anybody who deserved this award more than you did my dear! Way to go and Congratulations!
Marlisse,
congratulations again on being recognized for your outstanding and innovative teaching at LSC!
Mark
Marlise,
I was a student of yours in 2002. I was always excited to come to class, and I remember learning easily under your approach. Thank you, and congratulations on an award that is much deserved! Keep it up!
Again, congratulations. Remember the beginning of our assessment movement on campus. You have continued to grow in assessment and to inspire your colleagues to satisfy their curiousity about learning in their classrooms. You certainly deserve this recognition.
CONGRATULATIONS!! I am so proud of you! No one deserves it more than you do! Great photos! Glad you had a great time! Savor this national recognition of your many years of dedication to your deep calling! You have changed the world one student at a time and, fortunately, the world will forever be so much better!
You’re the best. Congratulations on this award. In the 34(?) years we’ve known you we’ve watched you put your heart and soul into everything you do. We’ve always been amazed by your dedication and energy and we’re glad it has been recognized.
This is overwhelming–thank you, thank you! Everyone should have this opportunity to be affirmed and applauded in their work–it feels wonderful.
Congratulations Marlise!! I am a voice from your past, but everything in the article about you winning this award sounds just like the person I knew at Rochester Community College. Your students continue to be very lucky to have you as a guide in their studies and lives.
Another name from your past congratulates you on your award. Best wishes from a retired RCTC librarian.
Al Dollerschell
Oh my goodness! Wonderful voices from my past! Thank you so much.
Marlise, congrats on the award. I read of it last eve in the Rochester Post Bulletin and immediately went to memories of the Women’s Studies classes with you back in the nineties, when I drove from Austin every week. And your columns…I have a yellowing file of them all. It’s interesting that your award mentions team learning. But what you gave me is a much needed sense of my own individual worth. I’m still working on that. Still writing, essays and poetry. I even did a column myself for the PB for awhile. Thank you for helping me to see that I matter. I am 83 and still growing, thanks to people like you.
Marlise: Congrats on the award. I read of it the Rochester Post Bulletin just last eve, and went on to remember driving to Rochester from Austin weekly to women’s studies classes back in the nineties. You gave me much. It’s interesting that the award mentions team approach to learning. What I remember is that you gave me a sense of my own worth, my value as an individual. And I needed that. I’m still working on it, writing poetry and essays and just living. I’m 82 and still learning, always will be. I remember your encouraging comments on my writing, and your love of the world. \The earth is my grandmother,\ you said. Amen. May I be your grandmother too?
Marlise, you were already professor of the year when I took your class last year, congratulations.
Marlise,
Congratulations on this exemplary award.
Well deserved.
I always enjoyed our professional and social contacts.You indeed enriched my life as well as the lives of your colleagues and students.
Best in all things.
Tom Ostrom Social Science Division RCTC (ret.)