Kristine Utterback in her office.
WYO-Gold Student Alumni Association, the UWAA student program, has selected Associate Professor Kristine Utterback of the history and religious studies departments as this year’s Outstanding Faculty Award recipient. This award recognizes a faculty member who had the greatest influence in preparing students during their years at UW for careers after college.
Utterback’s courses require creative and critical thinking to analyze her material. It was noted that her sometimes-abstract lectures lend themselves to creating thoughtful debate and encourage students to approach difficult questions from multiple directions. Utterback approaches the aspect of learning as if it never ends: “I take the idea of lifetime learning very seriously, and I think learning to learn is one of the most important aspects of a university education, although it’s probably more caught than taught. Being part of an environment that values learning is one of the greatest blessings I can imagine, and I love passing that on to my students.”
Utterback has put a strong focus on study abroad, from trips to Israel to teaching abroad in Shanghai, China, and London, England. Her challenging curriculum is a testament to the department, and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wyoming as a whole—how a diverse look at analytical research and interpretation of material can have a positive impact on students’ time in the classroom, and how it will prepare them for their careers.
Utterback’s love for teaching started well before her academic career began, as she states: “I probably became a teacher because teachers and education were much admired in my family. Like many of our UW students, I am a first-generation university graduate. My parents’ dream was for us all to graduate from college, and we did. I’m very curious about just about everything, so learning come naturally to me. And teaching is one of the best ways to learn, since it forces you to pull knowledge and information together into something coherent to present to others.”
This speaks volumes of what she brings to the classroom experience. Utterback received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowling Green State University in 1972, Master of Music degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1977, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 1980, and a Ph.D. at the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1984. She began at UW in 1986 in the Department of History as an associate professor, and then began to teach in the Department of Religious Studies in 2008, where she is now the department head.