Published on April 3, this article has been updated to incorporate the May 15 University homepage announcement of the Graduate School's annual Teaching Awards for 2025.
The Graduate School has presented its annual Teaching Awards to 10 Princeton graduate students, recognizing their exceptional skill, dedication and impact as instructors.
Adriana Dropulic (physics) was honored with the Quin Morton Graduate Teaching Award for instructors in the Princeton Writing Program, and Kelly Carlton (religion) received the Collaborative Teaching Initiative (CTI) Graduate Teaching Award. The eight other recipients of teaching awards are Narek Alexanian (economics), Elizabeth Bachman (politics), Giulia Crippa (operations research and financial engineering), Sean Gill (English), Honghao (Ham) Huang (psychology), Grace Monk (comparative literature), Samuel Pavelites (chemistry) and Kit Sum (Katie) Wu (mechanical and aerospace engineering.)
“As preceptors and teaching assistants, this year’s awardees have made significant contributions to undergraduate learning,” said Lisa Schreyer, deputy dean of the Graduate School. “Their commitment not only deepens undergraduate engagement but also strengthens their own growth and development as scholar-educators.”
The award selection committee, chaired by Schreyer, is composed of academic affairs deans from the Graduate School and staff from the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. The committee reviewed nominations submitted by academic departments and programs, including personal letters of recommendation from faculty and undergraduate students. Each award carries a $1,000 prize.
Sean Gill
In his letter in support of the English department’s nomination of Gill for the 2025 Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, William Gleason, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of English and American Studies, described “an extraordinarily gifted and inventive instructor who devotes himself tirelessly to helping students thrive in the classroom.”
Gill led six precepts of Gleason’s fall 2024 undergraduate lecture course “American Television.” Gleason noted that Gill seemed “energized” by working with a large number of students, and that they “responded enthusiastically” to his teaching methods, which included detailed responses to every assignment, capped by a summary letter addressed to each student that struck “a perfect balance between encouragement and critique,” Gleason said. “That he did this for more than 70 students remains mind-boggling to me.”
Read about all ten students honored in the full University homepage article: