Rahel Bokretsion Receives Excellence in Teaching Award

Senior chemistry lecturer Rahel Bokretsion is the recipient of the 2023 Mother Evelyn Murphy Excellence in Teaching Award from Dominican University.

The award recognizes full-time undergraduate faculty members for achievements in teaching, including their command and communication of subject matter, ability to intellectually stimulate students, and their availability to students for academic assistance, among other criteria.

Winners of the award are selected through student voting.

Bokretsion, who joined Dominican University as an adjunct professor in 2011, discovered a love of chemistry while a high school student in Eritrea. She initially considered entering the medical field, but opportunities for further study in her country were limited. At the time, the country’s only university did not have a medical school, she said.

Expectations for women generally did not involve higher education, and certainly not in the scientific fields, Bokretsion noted.

But she pushed forward to pursue the study of chemistry.

“The reason I am here is because of my parents’ encouragement,” she said. “But socially and culturally there was a stigma on women in science.”

Bokretsion obtained master’s degrees in chemistry from the University of Pretoria in South Africa and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She began teaching 20 years ago.

“I feel like I’m also learning every day, so I really love the profession,” she said.

In 2021, Bokretsion told Dominican magazine that she works to create positive interactions with her students as a way to make them more comfortable with the subject of chemistry, which she acknowledges can be challenging to learn.

“In the first week of the semester, I invite each student into my office and I spend 10 to 15 minutes with them, explaining my expectations,” she explained. “And that creates a good atmosphere for me and for them.”

It also allows Bokretsion to get to know her students and for them to share with her how they effectively learn.

“I start the interaction with my personal story of how I got here and it opens a discussion,” she shared. “Then I tell them my expectations.

That creates for both of us a good connection and it is translated into learning, I feel.”

As the recipient of the Mother Evelyn Murphy Excellence in Teaching Award, Bokretsion spoke during the 2023 undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 7.

The award is named for Mother Evelyn Murphy (1881-1955), who served as president of Rosary College from 1928 to 1943 and established international study programs for women in Fribourg, Switzerland and Florence, Italy.