But Bridges' impact on quality teaching extends far beyond own classroom. He's also one of the founders of Large Lecture Instructors, an informal group who teach the biggest classes on campus, and he directs his department's PEW Foundation Program for Preparing Future Faculty. Bridges conceived of the Faculty Fellows Program, a kind of teaching institute, more than two years ago and sold the idea to former Provost Wayne Clough. The large lecture group also grew out of Bridge's energy. We brought in accomplished lecturers from off campus, people with great ideas to share with us, and I've found this is really helpful to my work.
Bridges works hard at teaching.
He always has, but he had to overcome an innate shyness to feel comfortable lecturing to 500 students. His first teaching job was an introductory sociology course for eight students at Case Western University in Cleveland in the early 1980s. At the end of the semester, one of the students came up and told me that my face turned beet red the entire semester, every time lectured. When I came to the UW, Sociology 271 was my assigned class. I worked very hard to have lectures prepared.