Lajos Bokros and Cristina Corduneanu-Huci Recognized with 2016 CEU Distinguished Teaching Awards

During the 26th Opening Ceremony at CEU on September 16, Department of Economics and SPP Professor Lajos Bokros and SPP Assistant Professor Cristina Corduneanu-Huci received 2016 Distinguished Teaching Awards "for promoting high standards of teaching" in the classroom. They are both widely recognized and appreciated by CEU students as especially effective teachers.

Bokros says that he enjoys teaching and gets a particular pleasure out of being able to "explain complex issues in a simple but systematic way." He says that he encourages his students "to ask any impertinent question" and to put forward any ideas they might have. "I ask them also not to be afraid of each other," he says.

Corduneanu-Huci says she too enjoys the challenge of "de-jargonizing often cryptic academic fields" and welcomes spirited discussions in the classroom. She also enjoys the opportunity that teaching gives her to learn from her students. "Teaching helps my own research agenda as well," she adds.

Both Bokros and Corduneanu-Huci have been inspired by other great teachers. Bokros says that former CEU President and Rector Yehuda Elkana – "a person of immense knowledge about a wide variety of subjects" – is the "fatherly figure I follow in teaching." Bokros says that Elkana was an especially eloquent lecturer. "Not only students, but professorial groups too could learn a lot from his methods and approach."

Corduneanu-Huci gained an appreciation for teaching at an early age. "My mother taught biology in middle school with incredible dedication and passion. She continuously encouraged and guided her students to take knowledge outside the classroom into the real world," she remembers. Corduneanu-Huci says that she also learned an important lesson from her PhD mentor at Duke University, Professor Karen Remmer. She is the one who "taught me to walk the fine line between guiding and allowing students to develop their own intellectual voices."