Helping Students See the World Differently: Lilith Green Receives SBS Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award

Lilith Green, a doctoral student in the School of Sociology, received the SBS Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, which recognizes superior and innovative work by a graduate teaching assistant or associate.

Green, who received their master’s degree in sociology from the University of Memphis, has served as a TA in a range of courses at the University of Arizona, including SOC/CHS 401 Health Disparities in Society, CHS 421 Drugs and Society, and SOC/PA 341 Juvenile Delinquency. 

As a graduate instructor, they taught CHS 202 Connecting Health and Society and CHS/SOC 404 Sociology of Mental Health — the latter taught across both semesters of the 2025–26 academic year and the course for which they were nominated.

Student feedback underscores Green’s ability to create a classroom environment where students feel both supported and challenged. In Fall 2025, more than 80% of students strongly agreed they were treated with respect and encouraged to analyze and apply course concepts — the two highest-rated items on the survey. 

One student wrote that Green “cares about her students and checks in with us often,” while another noted that the memos kept them “accountable to stay engaged with the content.”

That approach is grounded in a clear and intentional teaching philosophy. As their nominators noted, Green centers their classroom on a powerful metaphor: asking students to put on “kaleidoscopic glasses” — lenses that do not change the world but reveal the patterns within it differently depending on how they are arranged.

“Lilith clearly brings to their courses a breadth of pedagogical excellence across institutions and course levels. This reflects a genuine commitment to undergraduate teaching,” wrote Jeffrey Sallaz and Louise Roth, professors in the School of Sociology.

That approach reflects Green’s broader goal: helping students see the world differently and equipping them to change it by understanding the patterns that shape it.

"My ultimate goal is to get students into the habit of asking why things look the way they do,” Lilith said, “and to feel emboldened to imagine a world they can help shape with more care than the one they've inherited." 

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