2025-26 Excellence in Teaching for Global Learning Award
The Excellence in Teaching for Global Learning Award recognizes UC Davis instructors of the Academic Senate or Academic Federation who go above and beyond in designing and teaching UC Davis global learning programs. This year’s recipients are Ozcan Gulacar (Academic Senate), and Marc Ishisaka-Nolfi (Academic Federation).
Ozcan Gulacar
Ozcan Gulacar is a professor of teaching in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Letters and Science. He exemplifies UC Davis’s commitment to preparing students to engage meaningfully with global challenges through responsible action, intercultural understanding and systems thinking.
Through his First-Year Seminar, Find Your Passion: Learning About Sustainability in a Global Context, Gulacar guides students through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, connecting chemistry and scientific inquiry to issues such as food security, clean water, climate action and planetary health.
A hallmark of his teaching is the Green Fund Initiative proposal project, in which students design evidence-based sustainability initiatives for the UC Davis campus. This experiential work challenges students to analyze global problems while developing feasible, ethical solutions grounded in scientific understanding and stakeholder awareness.
In his large-enrollment General Chemistry courses, which collectively reach nearly 2,500 students each year, Gulacar embeds global case studies into core scientific concepts, helping students see chemistry as integral to environmental justice, resource sustainability and human well-being.
His nominators said that his courses are often “the first time [students] understood chemistry as a field directly connected to global justice and sustainability.”
Marc Ishisaka-Nolfi
Marc Ishisaka-Nolfi is a continuing lecturer in the Department of Design in the College of Letters and Science. For nearly two decades, he has distinguished himself as a deeply student-centered educator whose courses integrate rigorous studio practice with cultural inquiry and reflective design processes.
Whether teaching foundational graphic design or advanced motion typography, he emphasizes research, critique and the ethical dimensions of visual communication. Colleagues describe him as intellectually generous and meticulous in course design, and students consistently note his respect, availability and high standards.
This commitment to globally informed design finds powerful expression in his creation and leadership of Design Japan, a four-week immersive study abroad program in Tokyo and Kyoto. Since its launch in 2023, the program has reached full enrollment and draws students from across UC campuses and beyond.
In Japan, Ishisaka-Nolfi uses place as pedagogy. Students engage the built environment, material culture and everyday design practices as primary texts, translating lived experience into research-driven studio projects. Through structured critiques, reflective writing and sustained observation, he challenges students to recognize that design is never culturally neutral, but is embedded in history, labor, identity and meaning.
Ishisaka-Nolfi's nominators shared that his work “integrates cultural inquiry, academic rigor, reflective practice and community-building in ways that have a lasting impact on students’ intellectual, creative and personal growth.”
