Student Assembly presented history professor David Lagomarsino the Profiles in Excellence teaching award at a gathering of about 20 students Tuesday evening in recognition of the professor's commitment to undergraduate teaching.
Before choosing Lagomarsino, the Assembly's Academic Affairs Committee weighed nominations from the student body via BlitzMail messages, in which students described how their chosen professors exemplified excellence in teaching.
Academic Affairs Committee Chairman Russell Lane '06 said that the committee selected the history department vice chair because of his extraordinary nominations.
"His nominations really stood out from the rest of the pool," Lane said. "He was selected for his outstanding teaching ability as well as his dedication to students."
The Profiles in Excellence teaching award is a product of the Assembly's Undergraduate Teaching Initiative, a program established in the fall of 2001 to protect Dartmouth's focus on undergraduate teaching, Lane said in his opening remarks.
Upon receiving the award, Professor Lagomarsino said that the honor struck him as strange.
"Receiving an award for doing something I love seems kind of unnecessary," he said.
Lagomarsino proceeded to outline the chain of events that led him from a child reared in Argentina to a Dartmouth professor.
Lagomarsino left Argentina when he was 15 years old and attended high school in Wales. He completed undergraduate work at Harvard University and went on to Cambridge University in England in pursuit of a master's degree in literature.
While at Cambridge, however, the direction of his education and life changed.
Lagomarsino's graduate advisor at Cambridge, renowned early-modern historian J.H. Elliott, convinced him to pursue a Ph.D. in early-modern history instead.
After receiving his doctorate, Lagomarsino, by then an expert on early modern Western Europe, had no plans of entering academia. Then he discovered a job opening at Dartmouth for a history professor with exactly his specialty.
Lagomarsino took the job, planning to stay in Hanover only for a few years before leaving teaching. That was 32 years ago.
"Why did I stay?" Lagomarsino asked. "I'll tell you. It was the teaching."
After the professor's brief statement, the floor opened to a round-table discussion about the state of undergraduate teaching at Dartmouth.
On the topic of undergraduate instruction, Lagomarsino said that his extensive research and his success as a professor go hand in hand.
"I think not only does research keep the teaching alive, but I've found that teaching helps the research," he said.
