Professor Robert N. Watson

2006 Faculty Prize Recipient

Image of Professor Robert Watson

Professor Robert Watson came to UCLA with degrees from Yale and Stanford, followed by faculty positions at Smith College and Harvard University. He is a distinguished Renaissance scholar who is recognized as one of the best teachers at UCLA, a “legendary” figure bringing Shakespeare to life with great passion and wit. He calls his students by name, encourages class discussion that involves even the quiet student in the back row, and gives detailed commentary on student papers. He consoles those in need and treats all student comments with respect. He is the teacher we would all wish to have or to be.

Professor Watson has been the Head Scholar for the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at the Folger Library in Washington DC, where he spends alternate summers training high school teachers from across America. When questioned about the time the Institute takes away from writing, he responds that he considers this a contribution of greater value than his “writing his fourth book.”

His generosity with his time and energy is unmatched on the UCLA campus. When something needs to be done, the call goes out to Dr. Watson, and he rarely says no. Rob (as his students call him) has spoken repeatedly at UCLA Foundation retreats, Parents’ Weekends, College Honors Days, Orientation sessions, and many other recruitment and fundraising events. He has served as chair of the UCLA Faculty Executive Committee and of the English department, and is now the Associate Vice-Provost for Educational Innovation. He chairs the College Honors committee, as well as three new programs he helped establish and build: the Fiat Lux seminars (two hundred each year), the Writing II requirement, and student-initiated courses. Far from his main academic field, he created and team-taught a very popular new interdisciplinary General Education Cluster course on The United States 1963-74. As Humanities Dean Pauline Yu reported, “his contributions with respect to the running of the campus put most of the rest of the faculty to shame: some of the most important innovations, in general education especially, were shepherded through under his leadership of the faculty.”

And none of this has kept him from writing that fourth book: Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance. His books, editions of Jonson plays, and numerous reviews and articles, have drawn critics to describe his work as elegant, powerful, human, important, and masterful, and have won him several top national research fellowhips including a Guggenheim in 2002.

A list of Professor Watson’s other academic honors is too lengthy for this space, but he was a recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 2000 where he was described as “one of UCLA’s true heroes.” He is a magnificent educator, scholar, and citizen, and UCLA is fortunate to have him. It is a privilege for Gold Shield to honor him as the eleventh recipient of the Gold Shield Faculty Prize.