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Professors Judith Green (Education) and Tevfik Bultan (Computer Science) received Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards from the Academic Senate. They were among 11 faculty members and graduate student teaching assistants to receive honors.

For the very best faculty, mentoring doesn't end at the conclusion of a course or program. The practice is a way of life. Dr. Judith Green, professor in UC Santa Barbara's Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, believes "mentoring is a dynamic part of life in higher education, not something that one does only in small moments with particular individuals."
It is this philosophy that has earned Green and Dr. Tevfik Bultan, professor of Computer Science, 2015-16 Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards from the Academic Senate. Green and Bultan, along with five other faculty members and four graduate student TA's, were honored on April 21 at a reception and Academic Senate Faculty Legislature meeting. See below for the names of all of the winners.
In GradPost interviews, Professors Green and Bultan âdiscussed what the award means to them, the qualities they believe an excellent mentor possesses, and the importance of graduate students to the mission of the university, among other topics.
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Tevfik Bultan. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
Bultan, who joined the Computer Science Department at UCSB in 1998, doesn't take sole credit for the award. "UCSB has many outstanding graduate programs, so I am very honored to be recognized in this way in this elite university," said Bultan, who directs the Verification Laboratory. "I see this award as a recognition of all the hard work and success of my graduate students."
There is no one set of skills and talents possessed by an excellent mentor, Bultan said. "Every person is different with a unique combination of talents," he said. "A key part of graduate mentoring is to help students figure out how to use their talents in the most effective way. An excellent mentor is someone who encourages students to apply their talents in the most productive way to topics that inspire them."
Bultan, who has advised 18 Ph.D. and M.S. students, sees graduate students as crucial to a research institution such as UC Santa Barbara. "Universities have two basic missions: disseminating knowledge and expanding knowledge," he said. "What separates universities from other educational institutions is the mission of expanding knowledge. And, graduate students are the ones who contribute the most to this mission."
Tevfik Bultan shakes hands with Chancellor Henry Yang while Divisional Chair Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Professor Keith Clarke look on. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
Bultan said it's "wonderful to be recognized for the part of my job that I like the most: working with graduate students. Conducting research with outstanding graduate students is very rewarding in itself, so this award is the icing on the cake."
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Judith Green. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
Green, who joined the Department of Education at UCSB in 1990, said she was puzzled when they asked to interrupt the class. "When Mary told us why she was there, I was overwhelmed, surprised and happy that they were sharing this with my class and in particular with those who had written in support of my nomination," Green said. "The public nature of the announcement, in real time, with early career scholars present was an amazing gift."
Professor Green believes that the value of mentoring is that it can be passed on from generation to generation as those who were recipients of mentoring go on to be mentors themselves.
"For me, mentoring is serving as a cultural guide to make transparent ways of viewing and understanding the potential directions that students will take," she said. "It is a way of paying forward what others have shared with me along my journeys over the past six decades." In her 25-year career at UCSB, Green has mentored 54 doctoral and master's students.
Professor Judith Green, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Professor Keith Clarke. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
An excellent mentor, she said, "learns with and from intergenerational scholars, shares personal as well as professional experiences for exploring histories as well as for (re)formulating future possibilities. Mentoring is a communal process, through which more senior participants in a field learn from those developing disciplinary as well as professional knowledge." Green added that an excellent mentor is also someone who is "not afraid to challenge the thinking of others."
Judith Green gets a congratulatory hug from Keith Clarke. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
Mentoring of graduate students is vital, Green said, because "as a research university, graduate students are the heart of our programs and help to create the depth of knowledge that is made available to undergraduate students." Graduate students, she added, "create new understandings of how to solve current problems; they create opportunities for faculty to explore how to engage students in learning state-of-the-art knowledge, not simply to reproduce known knowledge. Graduate students also serve as research mentors, or what our group calls 'cultural guides' for undergraduates as well as interdisciplinary colleagues."
See the full list of winners below. Congratulations to all!
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2015-16 Academic Senate Award Winners
Distinguished Teaching Awards:
- Tommy Dickey (Geography)
- John Latto (Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology and College of Creative Studies)
- Erika Rappaport (History)
- Salim Yaqub (History)
- James Donelan (Writing Program, English, College of Creative Studies), non-Senate recipient
â Tommy Dickey with Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Chancellor Henry Yang. Credit: Patricia Marroquin John Latto, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Professor Sarah Cline. Credit: Patricia Marroquin Erika Rappaport, second from left, poses with Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Professor Sarah Cline. Credit: Patricia Marroquin James Donelan, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Sarah Cline. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards:
- Tevfik Bultan (Computer Science)
- Judith Green (Education)
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Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award winners are, from left, Jeffrey Carmichael, Becky Robinson, and Andrew Swafford. Hannah Goodwin was not present. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards:
- Jeffrey Carmichael, Chemistry
- Hannah Goodwin, Film and Media Studies
- Becky Robinson, Communication
- Andrew Swafford, Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology
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Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Jeffrey Carmichael, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Tommy Dickey. Credit: Patricia Marroquin

Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Becky Robinson, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Tommy Dickey. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
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Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Andrew Swafford, Chancellor Henry Yang, and Tommy Dickey. Credit: Patricia Marroquin
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Jeffrey Carmichael is congratulated by Chancellor Henry Yang while Professor Tommy Dickey looks on. Credit: Patricia Marroquin