UCLA's Teofilo F. Ruiz awarded the National Humanities Medal, President Obama has announced

Inside Higher Ed this morning pointed me to a news item from last Friday: Teofilo Ruiz, a professor of history and of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA – whose unusual faculty webpage photo appears at left - was awarded a National Humanities Medal according to a White House announcement.  The actual awarding of the medal will take place today.

Excerpt from the official profile released by the White House: 

Ruiz has also earned accolades for his teaching, including being named U.S. professor of the year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1995 and receiving UCLA’s Distinguished Teacher Award in 2008. He describes his teaching style as “frantic, hectic.” As a graduate student, Ruiz admired professors like Carl Schorske, who could deliver an elegant well-crafted lecture from behind a podium. “I can’t do that. It’s not in my abilities,” he says. “I engage the students by combining the personal with the scholarly.”

He also doesn’t use notes. “I can’t explain how it happens. I walk into the classroom. I am in an absolute panic even after thirty-nine years of doing this. And then something possesses me for one hour and fifteen minutes and I cannot stop. I am like the Energizer Bunny.”

Full story on Ruiz and other medal winners in Inside Higher Ed at: http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/02/13/obama-announces-2011-national-humanities-medals#ixzz1mHNQqATJ 

White House announcement at http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20120210.html

Profile of Prof. Ruiz as part of the announcement at http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/2011_Medalists.html#No7

UCLA announcement at http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-wins-national-humanities-228694.aspx