McKenzie received the Cawthorne Award for Excellence in Teaching at Commencement 2008 from Provost Rosemary Allen and President Bill Crouch.
Congratulations to Dr. Karyn McKenzie, who received the 2008 Cawthorne Excellence in Teaching Award. Continue on to read about her delivered lecture, entitled “Humans’ Capacity for Cruelty: The Milgram Studies.” Click Continue reading to read about Dr. McKenzie and her lecture.
Psychology professor Karyn McKenzie is so well known for her caring and acts of kindness on the Georgetown College campus that delivering the annual Cawthorne Lecture Tuesday with the word “Evil” in the title almost seemed out of character.
At the beginning of “Humans’ Capacity for Evil: The Milgram Studies,” Dr. McKenzie asked the CEP audience in a nearly-packed Hill Chapel to judge (as individuals) whether these controversial experiments should have ever been conducted. Then, she gave a glimpse into these experiments performed in the early Sixties at Yale University (her eventual alma mater) that ultimately revealed complicated questions of professional ethics. “Perhaps most importantly,” said McKenzie, a social psychologist. “They revealed the dark side of human behavior – our capacity to inflict acts of evil upon others who have not harmed us in any way.”
“The Milgram Studies were designed to put participants in a situation that left them torn between their personal morals and an authority figure’s demands,” McKenzie continued. “No one accurately predicted which way people would be pulled.” Actual video footage of one of those experiments showed the stunning reality of how easily one could be conditioned to obey such a cruel authority figure.
Then, McKenzie applied Milgram’s results to such historical events and figures as Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, architect of the Jewish Holocaust; Lt. William Calley and the 1968 My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam; cult leader Jim Jones and the 1978 Jonestown Massacre in Guyana, South America; David Koresh and the deadly 1993 Branch Davidian compound siege in Waco, TX; the Abu Ghraib Torture Scandal that first surfaced in ’04; and today’s international terrorist network known as Al-Qaida.
Many of her examples showed that the United States has not become a gentler, kinder nation since those Milgram experiments. “We all have capacity for evil when blind obedience is at work,” McKenzie said.
“By no means am I advocating rebellion against ALL authority. Most of the time it certainly isn’t warranted. However, I do think it is our duty as responsible humans to stand up to unfair and cruel authority figures,” she said, concluding, “So, keep your eyes open, don’t be mindless and question authority.”
Ahhh, that’s the Dr. Karyn McKenzie Georgetown students have known and loved for the past 12 years; the same teacher who’d already won the College’s Lindsey Apple Student Life Involvement Award and the John Walker Manning Mentor Award. This associate professor of Psychology has been the Senior Banquet keynote speaker four times in the past 10 years, including this past May. No wonder she was chosen for the Don and Chris Kerr Cawthorne Award for Excellence in Teaching at Commencement 2008.
No wonder a favorite former student, Becca Johnson ’02, flew down from New York to witness the Cawthorne honor, surprising her ex-Psych Bowl coach and “the best teacher/professor I have ever had in my life.” Now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College, Johnson wrote “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!” She had written a four-page letter of recommendation that included references to the Facebook group “Dr. McKenzie Rocks the House” and an extremely high rating on RateMyProfessor.com.
But it’s not her knowledge of “the dark side” that has endeared McKenzie to Georgetown students since 1996. They could probably care less that she graduated from Yale, then received the Sam Gunto Award for Outstanding Research in Social Psychology twice while getting both advanced degrees at the University of Kentucky. Many have teased her after learning she was Rowan County Junior Miss during her high school years at Rowan County (Morehead, KY), but no one interviewed brought it up.
For a decade plus, she’s been the teacher who’s taken caring way beyond the classroom – who has not only brightened those dark days for once and former students, but who has stayed in touch and been such a part of their lives. Here are a few of their e-mail responses:
Dr. Karyn McKenzie shared a laugh with Brooke Reed ’07, a former Psych Bowl team member, at Homecoming 2007.
Brooke Reed ’07, who finished her M.S. in June in Educational Psychology and is currently working on my Ed.S (Educational Specialist) in School Psychology:
Last summer when I lost my 25 year-old brother to unexpected heart failure, Dr. McKenzie supported me by sending encouraging cards and emails, calling to check on me, comforting me at the visitation, and listening to me describe the pain I was going through. Dr. McKenzie showed me that she was trustworthy and used her knowledge and sensitivity to help me through the toughest time of my life.
Stephanie Carlisle ’08, the 2006 Belle of the Blue coordinator for SGA, and now a Fixed Asset Accountant for Fifth Third Bank, Cincinnati:
To me, the most amazing thing about her is her genuine concern and interest in EVERY student. When I had a death in the family last semester, she took the time to see how I was doing and even wrote a sympathy card. Even since I’ve graduated, she has kept up through email, always wanting to know the details of my life. She was encouraging as I started a new job, elated when I told her good news, and comforting when I shared stresses.
Cancer survivor James Bush ’08, a former President’s Ambassador and the President’s Award winner, who is pursuing the Master of Divinity at Asbury Theological Seminary:
As I battled with cancer, she would constantly check on me, show genuine concern, and encourage me whenever she saw me. She shows a genuine, heartfelt concern for all of her students. That is why students are always wait-listed to get in her classes!
Katie Columbus ’06, who’s working at a gym and as a waitress in Los Angeles while waiting for her Hollywood break. Ironically, a star on GC’s (NAIA) basketball team, she’s in a new NCAA commercial:
My FAVORITE memory was when (Dr. M) invited me, Neeley Thomas, and Amy Hogue to her house for a pizza dinner with her kids, who had been begging for us to babysit. Neeley and Amy decided to have a cupcake eating contest. I don’t remember who won but what followed is what made me truly see what kind of person Dr. McKenzie is. After laughing at all of us for our antics, she – before we knew it – took our dare and shoved a whole cupcake in her mouth. Within seconds she’d swallowed the whole thing with only a ring of icing on her face as proof that she dominated the cupcake dare!!! We were crying from laughing so hard. How many teachers do you know that would allow their personality to shine so much? Dr. McKenzie was never afraid to make herself vulnerable in order to allow her to connect more with her students.
Kari Rustay West ’03 is Project and Office Manager for a local (Georgetown) public finance company and is married to Robb West ’03. She, like many others, treasures being part of numerous McKenzie family gatherings, but her teacher’s counsel when her mother was in the advanced stages of ovarian cancer and what came next are unforgettable:
In months around the time my mother’s diagnosis became terminal, Karyn (McKenzie) wrote a letter to my mom about me and about her as a mother. It wasn’t the praise or flattery written in that note, but it was my mother’s connection to that letter. I have never seen her so touched by words on a page. She kept it close with her in those last months. During the days of her funeral, we paid tribute to my mother and celebrated her full life. Her “favorite” note was one of the only cherished items she actually requested be displayed. So, as I sit here crying as I remember those times and feelings, THAT is the memory of Karyn. I will never forget. I will always remember what she gave to my mom and her pure joy, tears and smiling face as she read that note.
Kristen Rosquist Schornick ’03, who recently relocated to Bowling Green, was honored to have her favorite professor attend her wedding to J.R. Schornick ’02 in August. She, too, has a touching tale of receiving a McKenzie note of encouragement and love on the anniversary of her mother’s passing, but this memory captures a familiar humorous side:
(Needing one class to gradauate), I decided to take yet another Dr. McKenzie class. I only needed an elective so I took whatever psychology class I hadn’t had (101). I was the oldest student in there but I didn’t care …Psych was my minor and I really wanted to take one last class from her. Every year every student looks around the class for familiar faces of friends and who to sit with; and you always say ” Oh, I’m so glad were in this class together at least there is one person I know!” Well as I began to look around the only familiar face I saw was Dr. McKenize’s….
It was sooo funny because instead of having that conversation with the other students I had it with Dr. McKenzie. She looked at me and said ” I’m so glad you’re in this class at least there is one person I know!” I had to laugh because it was so funny to see how our relationship had grown over the years in college.
Sarah Flynn ’07, who’s in her second year in the University of Kentucky’s School Psychology Ed.S. Program and spending 12 hours a week with the school psychologist at Scott County’s Western Elementary. While she could rave about the McKenzie classroom or her “open door” office policy, her favorite times were when she accompanied the Psych Bowl Team and Research Team to dinner after a conference or when she welcomes past students to her home for lunch and to socialize:
It’s during these times that I’ve joked with Dr. McKenzie and seen her never-ending humor. It’s during these times that I’ve realized that Dr. McKenzie, although a wonderful professor and mentor, is also a person just like you or me.
Taylor Hampton Phillips ’06, who – with her husband Jay – are with World Help and traveling the country with a choir of 15 children who are from the organization’s orphan homes in Uganda, Guatemala and Nepal. She wrote about never missing a McKenzie class…and about all the jobs her professor recommended her for; but, she worried (unnecessarily) about not following her advice on “relationships”:
The summer before my senior year, I met my future husband. We began dating long-distance that fall semester and into the spring. I was taking Dr. McKenzie’s Relationships class at the time. I remember all the anxiety I felt during some of her lectures about what it takes to find a good spouse, and the dating criteria that needed to be fulfilled before entering into a serious, long-term commitment. She said couples needed to date at least two years before getting married, and that was how long it took to truly know someone. When my boyfriend proposed to me in March and we became engaged, I remember thinking, “What is Dr. McKenzie going to say?” Or more importantly, “What is she going to think?” Jay and I had only dated six months! I valued her opinion so much and she had such a strong influence over me.
Looking back, I laugh at my apprehension. Dr. McKenzie has always supported me, and I know I can continually count on her. My husband and I have been married two years now, and Dr. McKenzie attended our wedding.
The Cawthorne Excellence in Teaching Award was established by (the late couple) Don B. and Chris Kerr Cawthorne in 1988 as a way to acknowledge a faculty member who has demonstrated a dedication to students and a gift for excellent teaching. Before introducing speaker Karyn McKenzie, the professor with the current Cawthorne title, Provost Rosemary Allen paid tribute to Dr. Keon Chi – the ’98 recipient – who died in a tragic car accident Jan. 8, 2008.
Cawthorne Fellows
- Dr. Frank Wiseman 1989, retired
- Dr. James Heizer 1990, retired
- Dr. Steven May 1991, retired
- Dr. Gwen Curry 1992, retired
- Dr. John Blackburn 1993, retired
- Prof. Margaret Greynolds 1994, retired
- Dr. Austin French 1995, at GC since 1976
- Prof. Daniel Tilford 1996, retired
- Dr. Joe Lunceford 1997, at GC since 1981
- Dr. Keon Chi 1998, deceased
- Dr. Patricia Cooper 1999, retired
- Dr. Lindsey Apple 1999, retired
- Dr. Christine Leverenz 2000, at GC since 1982
- Dr. Paul Redditt 2001, retired
- Dr. Rosemary Allen 2002, at GC since 1984
- Dr. Rebecca Powell 2003, at GC since 1993
- Prof. George McGee 2004, at GC since 1984
- Dr. Peter LaRue 2005, at GC since 1993
- Dr. Barbara Burch 2006, at GC since 1994
- Dr. Mark Johnson 2007, at GC since 1985
- Dr. Karyn McKenzie 2008, at GC since 1996