History Professor David Hunt To Receive the 2002 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award

(Boston, MA) David Hunt will receive the 2002 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts Boston commencement exercises held on Saturday, June 1, at the Bayside Exposition Center, 10:30 a.m. Professor Hunt of the History Department is known for his continued excellence in teaching and assessment.

Evaluated by a committee of his peers, Hunt was noted for his “commitment to developing his student’s capacity to think to write and to write.” Students have found him “consummately organized,” “clear, carefully paced,” and “sharply focused with a balance of intellectual intimacy and authoritative scholarship.” Professor Hunt is sharing the teaching award with his colleague, A.P.Simonds, who arrived at the university the same year Hunt did.

“UMass Boston has been a vibrant teaching environment,” says Hunt, crediting his colleagues in instructing him on how to teach when he first came to the university in 1969. “We would visit each other’s classrooms and give each other feedback on how the class went.” Thirty years later, he comments, “It is a remarkable community of teachers who care here – it is a precious resource.”

In Hunt’s own method of teaching, he advocates using the experiences of non-traditional students as part of the classroom infrastructure. In describing his students, who typically fall outside of mode of the traditional 18-year old, he says, “They know more than traditional students. You can use their life circumstances as resources. Their life experiences are an important and instructive part of the class.”

A professor of history, Hunt teaches entry-level and upper level classes which touch upon his research interests in the Vietnam War and 20th-century Vietnam, the French Revolution, and politics and culture. He has published two books, co-edited The American War in Vietnam, and has contributed many chapters, articles, and reviews for books and journals.
Hunt has served as co-director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences from 1986 to 1993 and as associate director of the University Honors Program since 1999. He earned his B.A. from Haverford College and his Ph.D. at Harvard University.

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