Assaf Avni Receives Livingston 2007 Teaching Award

On the evening of May 16, Assaf Avni, a Texas Advertising Ph.D. student was announced as the winner of the William S. Livingston Outstanding Graduate Student Academic Employee Award. The award recognizes one of the University's Assistant Instructors. Assaf was nominated by Gary Wilcox, the John A. Beck Centennial Professor in Communication and Director of Graduate Studies. Wilcox noted, "It was my pleasure to nominate Assaf for this prestigious award. He was selected from all of the applicants university-wide for this recognition. He is truly deserving."

Assaf has been at UT Austin for 5 years, since the summer of 2002. He completed his MA here in 2004 and is currently working on his dissertation in the Ph.D. program.

Mr. Avni was recognized for his role as teacher of a 370 student -- Advertising and Popular Culture class in Spring 2007 and a 260 student class -- Creativity and American Culture in the Fall of 2006.

Last year Assaf was selected by the College of Communication students for the Texas Exes Teaching Award. As one student wrote: "Assaf has been the best professor I've had at UT. It was always evident that he truly cared about all of us and what we are learning. I have acquired so much knowledge in this class academically, but more important, knowledge that I will be able to use throughout the rest of my life." Another student wrote: "This was the only class I never missed one day of the entire semester and I am in 6 classes."

Assaf was one of the first in the department to use the Classroom Response System, an electronic interactive system that increases students' interaction and participation level in class activities. Assaf feels it is important that each class session will have at least one or two things each student can apply to their own lives. Each week he randomly selects

two students and invites them for coffee to talk about anything other than class-related material. "I that it gives me an opportunity to learn from them about what's cool nowadays and to be able to use their stories and frame of reference later in class to explain theoretical concepts", Assaf noted.

One student who had taken Assaf's Creativity and American Culture course recently emailed him to let him know that his class changed her life and inspired her to pursue a career as a video artist/ producer. Her journey led her to an amazing job with the producer of U2's latest music videos. In her own words: "I have to say your class changed my life and I mean that in the most literal and serious way. I have a story to tell you that you won't even believe. I don't even believe it. Your class, and one class-exercise in particular changed my life and I will never be able to thank you enough for that one single lecture."

5/21/2007