Kudos to Critical Writing instructors Louise Daoust and Salar Mohandesi, winners of 2016 Dean’s Awards for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students.
Daoust and Mohandesi both began their Ph.D. studies at Penn in 2010. Daoust, a native of Ottawa, Ontario, graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a degree in English and Philosophy. Mohandesi, of Tyson’s Corner, Va., earned his in History and Literary & Cultural Studies from the College of William and Mary.
This semester, Daoust teaches a seminar in Evolutionary and Environmental Psychology; Mohandesi on the 1960s and the Vietnam War.
The ‘60s were a seminal decade is history, Mohandesi says, because “hundreds of thousands of people across the globe challenged oppression, expanded democracy… and redefined the political, ultimately forcing open the field of the possible.”
When he learned of his award, “I immediately thought of my students,” says Mohandesi. “I thank them for their … hard work and critical engagement, and for making the course such an interesting, collective adventure.”