Nick Feamster Receives 2026 Quantrell Teaching Award
The transformative education offered at the University of Chicago begins in the classroom, with the teachers who inspire, engage and inform their students.
UChicago annually recognizes faculty for their incredible teaching and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students through the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards, believed to be the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching.
Nick Feamster, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science, learned a lot of things from his mentors that he took to heart, but one of them was this: to treat his class and classroom as a simulation of the real world.
“I want to try to give you problems to think about, and projects to work on, that are a simulation of what you would see when you leave,” he said. That extends to the way he designs exams, too. “In the real world, when you have a problem to solve, you turn to your friend or colleague and ask for help.”
Feamster’s teaching draws on his deep expertise in computer science, shaped by years of academic leadership at institutions like Princeton and Georgia Tech. His research focuses on network performance, security, and privacy—fields that impact everything from everyday Internet access to global policy.
It also means that when he teaches technical skills in his computer science classes, he considers what students will take away even if they don’t go into the field.
“I put myself into the shoes of someone who won’t be doing this work in a year,” he said. “What do I hope they remember and take with them for the rest of their lives?”
Those things might include: Curiosity about the world. How to solve problems with any resource on hand. And appreciation that there are often no hard and fast answers. He likes to structure his classes around an open-ended question, and to let the students shape the discussion.
His approach has left an enduring impression on those who take his courses.
“Prof. Feamster brings an incredible amount of enthusiasm and care to his teaching, and it shows in the way he actively works with students to shape the course around how we learn best,” wrote a student who nominated him for the award. “His class felt less like a traditional lecture and more like a shared effort.”
Feamster said he was deeply affected by receiving the award.
“This is probably the honor of my life,” he said. “It’s been one of the most rewarding aspects of my career to see the impact I’ve been able to have on students. It gives my job tremendous meaning.”
This article was adapted from an article published by UChicago News.
