The Michigan Daily

Prof. Andrei Markovitz is rendered speechless yesterday afternoon after LSA junior Andrew Bronstein, a co-chair of Students Honoring Outstanding University Teaching, announces that the professor has won the coveted Golden Apple Award. (ANGELA CESERE/Daily)

Political science and German Prof. Andrei Markovits was five minutes into his Sports and Society class yesterday when a voice interrupted him from the top of the lecture hall.

"Excuse me, Professor Markovits?" it asked. With a bewildered expression on his face, Markovits looked in the direction of the voice.

It belonged to LSA junior Andrew Bronstein, co-chair of Students Honoring Outstanding University Teaching.

Bronstein and three other SHOUT members then descended the stairs of the lecture hall in the Dennison Building, a bouquet of maize-and-blue balloons in hand, to present Markovits with the 17th -annual Golden Apple Award, given each year to the teacher a student committee selects as the best professor on campus.

"If I had known this, I would've put on a jacket," said Markovits - clad in a pair of brown corduroys and a merlot-colored hooded sweatshirt - after the strong applause of his students died down and he had a moment to collect his thoughts.

Once the honor had sunk in, Markovits returned to the day's lecture on the history of the National Hockey League in North America and its wider global significance, which he delivered, seemingly from memory, as his notes lay spread before him on the large lab table at the front of the room.

"I thought someone didn't like what I said about the Red Wings," he said in an interview once most of his students had left the lecture hall after class. Just before the SHOUT team appeared, he had mentioned the Detroit Cougars, who wouldn't become the Red Wings until 1932.

Later, in his office, where bulging shelves of books line the walls, Markovits reflected on the afternoon's excitement.

"I'm so flattered, and I'm so humbled, and I'm so honored," he said.

"It was perfect that it happened in the sports class," Markovits continued. "I love that class. Sports is still not treated with the same academic respect. I am very committed to fighting that."

Continued...

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