Karl Uhrig, Ph.D., teaches a Freshman Honors Colloquium (FHC) section for Honors College first-year students entitled “Discourse and Agency.” In his class, Uhrig assigns readings, films, discussion topics and papers that examine discourse and agency’s role in society, but his course extends beyond fictional examples of both discourse and agency. Uhrig has spent years refining his teaching style to empower students to use their agency to learn in a way they prefer and engage in open discourse with their classmates.
“It's all about their free speech. They're learning how to talk to people and have conversations, and it does get a little bit deep,” Uhrig said about his colloquium classroom discussions. “And I always saw myself as kind of a provocateur. I want to make my students mad.”
Uhrig has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a minor in German from Colorado College and a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Indiana University in Bloomington. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Language Education, also at Indiana University. In 2024, Uhrig earned a Master of Arts in German Translation from ɬ. Uhrig has been teaching at ɬ for fourteen years. Along with FHC, Uhrig occasionally teaches German courses.
Uhrig’s energetic, thoughtful, and at times, provocative teaching style has made him a favorite among Honors College students and led to his selection as this year’s Distinguished Honors Faculty Award winner.
About Uhrig, one student wrote: “Professor Uhrig is a diamond in the rough. His enthusiasm, encouragement and personal dedication to make sure every individual achieves personal success inside and outside of the classroom has made my Freshman Honors Colloquium something special.”
Each year, current Honors College students vote on one faculty member to recognize for their hard work and dedication to the Honors College and its students. The award was presented to Uhrig during the Senior Honors Reception on April 17, 2025.
“I was just shocked that I even got nominated for this award because I've never won anything like this ever before,” Uhrig admitted. “But I am very pleased about it.”
Uhrig believes that his current FHC students have played a significant role in him receiving this honor. He calls his current students his “dream” classes. This year, Uhrig has two FHC sections, and both classes are incredibly vocal and receptive to the discussions that make up the core of Uhrig’s classes.
“I hardly get a word in edgewise,” Uhrig said.
Uhrig has seen his students' openness and investment reflected in their classwork. The final assignment in Uhrig’s course is a research paper that challenges students to write about something going on in the world that makes them really mad. Uhrig’s goal with this prompt is to give his students the agency to write about whatever topic they are most passionate about.
“If you don't have any feelings about what you're writing, then it's not going to be good writing,” Uhrig said. “Sometimes people pick things that aren't world changing, they're just seemingly small, and often, that produces better writing.”
Uhrig has found that this year, students are selecting especially controversial and nuanced topics to explore for their paper — and he loves that. Uhrig encourages students to follow their research and change their theses as necessary. He’s even seen some students change their personal views on topics based on their research in his class.
“That's just the best part of my job, when I see somebody who just really starts to blossom in their intellect. I hope I contribute to it in some way,” Uhrig said.
Allowing students the agency to follow their passions and explore topics however they choose is the foundation of Uhrig’s teaching philosophy. This approach was born while he was pursuing his Ph.D. in language education at Indiana University.
During his time as a Ph.D. candidate, Uhrig noticed that the same language learning strategies were being used for every English language learning student at the university. For his dissertation, Uhrig decided to explore this “one-size-fits-all” approach by periodically interviewing two international students on the methods they used to learn course material and complete assignments.
Uhrig found that each student had a unique, atypical way of learning, but both were incredibly successful in their studies. Uhrig began to understand that professionals could not control or predict how people would go about learning a language, nor could they control how that language was applied in academic settings.
“The only reason these students were successful is because they stuck to their own individual way of learning in defiance of the way that they were told they should learn,” Uhrig explained. “And so, I discovered the concept of agency. These students exercised their agency to learn the way that they knew was going to be most beneficial to them, regardless of how other people were trying to exert proxy agency over them or get them involved in collective agency.”
Teaching has been Uhrig’s life’s work, but he never saw himself becoming a teacher. Though you wouldn’t guess it now, Uhrig was very introverted as a child and young adult; he couldn’t imagine himself standing up in front of a group of students. A series of fortunate and unexpected events pushed him to overcome his anxieties around teaching — and find his passion.
Uhrig grew up on a remote wheat farm ten miles outside of Sterling, Colorado. After graduating high school, he enrolled in a bachelor’s program for English with a minor in German at Colorado College.
“I knew that I liked working with words and I loved reading,” Uhrig said about his decision. “I read all the time, and I did really well in my English classes. Everybody, especially my English teachers, was telling me ‘you should major in English because that is your strength.’”
After Uhrig graduated with his bachelor’s degree, he struggled to find a job. Teaching was far from what he wanted to do at the time, but Uhrig felt the need to “do something with his life”, so he volunteered to be an English teacher in Estonia for the Peace Corps. Uhrig spent three years teaching in Estonia where he explored the world, learned Estonian and discovered a genuine love for teaching.
After leaving the Peace Corps in 1995, Uhrig thought he knew what he wanted to do with his life: travel and teach English all over the world. He went back to the States and enrolled in the master’s program at Indiana University for applied linguistics and TESOL.
Uhrig’s path was diverted again when he met his partner, Mindy. Mindy was in the same master’s program as Uhrig at Indiana University. Though Mindy shared Uhrig’s love for teaching English, she did not yet want to travel.
Uhrig completed his master’s degree and then earned a Ph.D. in language education in 2006. Finished with his education, Uhrig accepted a position to teach in the English department at ɬ. Uhrig briefly left to teach at Valparaiso University in Indiana from 2013 to 2018 before returning to teach FHC at ɬ. Mindy also teaches at ɬ, having accepted a full-time position in the English department in 2012.
Along with teaching, Uhrig enjoys reading, biking around Kent and traveling with his wife and their two children, Melaina, 22, and Max, 17. The family recently visited London with Max’s school.
The Distinguished Honors Faculty Award began in 1992 and recognizes excellence in honors teaching based on advising of independent work, years of service and a record of strong teaching performance. View the complete list of previous recipients on the Honors College website.
For more information about the Honors College, please visit the Honors College website.
PHOTO CAPTION 1: Karl Uhrig, Dean Alison J. Smith and Thomas Brewer
Media Contact: Stephanie Moskal, smoskal@kent.edu, 330-672-2312