Awards

Lieber Memorial Associate Instructor Award - 2002

About Chris H. Hokanson

Walking into Chris Hokanson's composition class you were likely to get a juggling lesson. "Just as juggling requires hand-eye coordination,"he tells his students in the first days of class, "writing requires hand-mind coordination."Applying this metaphor to his students' learning, Hokanson showed them how to balance writing, reading and critical thinking skills.

Juggling, for Hokanson, was more than just a metaphor for multi-tasking. While most students entered his composition and literature classes as passive spectators of their education, they left as active participants, able to juggle those skills, make connections between courses, question cultural representations and shape their educations.

Hokanson, earned his Ph.D. in 2003, was himself a consummate juggler - metaphorically speaking. In addition to "Basic Composition"and "Language and Metaphor,"he taught, among other courses, "Reading and Writing Detective Fiction,""Parody and the Postmodern, Literature and the Visual Arts,"and "Professional Writing"and supplemented his extensive teaching experience with a minor in pedagogy/composition studies. He also served as a tutor with Writing Tutorial Services, as a graduate representative of various curriculum and teaching committees, and as a teaching consultant for new associate instructors.

Although he always seemed to have an inordinate number of his own bowling pins in the air, he never dropped one. He balanced and even merged his academic interests, composition studies and pedagogical research to create more meaningful educational experiences for his students.