ELON COLLEGE – Steve Braye, associate professor of English, was presented with the 1998-99 Daniels-Danieley Award for Excellence in Teaching at the annual Faculty-Staff Awards Luncheon on May 12.
Students as well as colleagues recognize Braye’s commitment to students in and out of the classroom.
“He works students very hard, but (and this is miraculous) they rise to his high expectations without whining or foot dragging. He manages this feat by his passionate, personal and intense approach to teaching. He cares so much about his students and about getting them to reconsider basic (and often sexist and classist) assumptions about “the way the world works” that they have no choice but to care back,” writes a colleague in support of his nomination.
“Many of my advisees have sat in my office and told how a certain class with Dr. Braye changed their lives – or at the very least the way they saw the world,” writes a colleague. “More often than not, it was he who held their admiration and respect and – and friendship. Steve’s students know that what they see is ‘what they get.” They can feel secure in knowing that he is fair, challenging, easy to find, easy to talk to, and always has a free minute to sit and listen to whatever is on their minds,” writes another colleague.
At first, students often are surprised by Braye’s disdain for ties and formal titles.
“As a naïve, far from worldly, 17-year-old, I came to Elon with preconceived notions of the college experience. Much like the students in Dickens’ “Hard Times,” I envisioned myself as an empty vessel: a slew of almighty professors would fill me to the brim with imperial gallons of facts,’ ” writes a current student. “Anyone who knows Steve can imagine the blow I received upon walking into his Global Experiences class in the fall of my freshman year. Before me stood a gangly man, donning a T-shirt, shorts and white Reeboks. ‘Call me Steve,’ he said.”
A former student says she and her friends often joked that she wanted to be Braye. “Not in the literal sense, of course, but in the best ways; I wanted to be the kind of teacher, the kind of friend and the kind of person he is,” writes the student who currently is attending graduate school studying to become a college professor. “So in truth, the joke with my friends was not a comment made in jest, but one meant in all sincerity. Every day I strive to be a little like him – I may never be him, but I realize now that he has helped me to be who I am.”
Braye also is a well-respected leader in the college community. He is chair of the academic council and last year served on the promotions and tenure committee and academic council.
Braye came to the college in 1989 to create the writing center, which he directed until 1998. In that capacity he gave students and faculty “a comfort zone to seek help in improving our writing and thinking skills,” notes a colleague.
He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a doctorate in English from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Braye is the 27th winner of the Daniels-Danieley Award, an award for excellence in teaching established by J. Earl Danieley, president emeritus and his wife, Verona Daniels Danieley, in honor of their parents.
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