Geshe Thupten Dorjee of the Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas was one of three University of Arkansas faculty recipients of the 2008 Teacher of the Year Award, sponsored by the University’s Student Alumni Board and Associated Student Government. 

Recipients of the honor are selected based on nominations by current and former students.  This year, a total of 84 faculty members received nominations; of those, 30 were selected as Outstanding Faculty Nominees and 3 were named Teacher of the Year.  Most of the nominees receive 2 or 3 nominations; Geshe-la received an unprecedented 20 nominations from his students.  The award is typically won by faculty members at Arkansas who have been teaching for 10-20 years; Geshe Dorjee received the award after teaching at the University for 3 semesters. 

The award was presented during a banquet attended by the Chancellor, Provost, Deans, student leaders, and other dignitaries of the University.  Geshe-la’s biography from the award banquet’s program reads:

Geshe Thupten Dorjee was born to a nomadic family in southern Tibet. Fleeing his country in 1959, Geshe and his family crossed the Himalayan Mountains, a treacherous journey, and arrived in a Tibetan refugee camp in Bhutan where Geshe and his family lived for over a decade. Constantly on the verge of starvation, witnessing the ravages of disease, Geshe happened to see several Tibetan monks debating and discussing philosophy, and at that point, he discovered his life’s calling.  Leaving the refugee camp, Geshe traveled to south India where, as a young teenager, he helped found and construct what would become the the largest Tibetan monastery in the world: Drepung Loseling Monastery.

Geshe then began a rigourous course of study that involved a series of written exams, extensive memory work, and public debates, with several of them conducted before the Dalai Lama himself.  In 1994, after 25 years of graduate-level work, Geshe was awarded the Geshe Lharampa degree, the highest degree awarded by a monastic university, and one of the most advanced degrees in the world.  The Dalai Lama suggested that Geshe’s future lay in the West, and for the past decade Geshe has been teaching and modeling the principles of non-violence in the United States.  He feels a very special connection to the University of Arkansas and is deeply devoted to his growing community of students. Currently, the University of Arkansas, with the generosity of Dean Don Bobbitt of Fulbright College, is the only University in America that has a Geshe Lharampa in residence.

News of this award has spread rapidly throughout the Tibetan community in exile, and has become a source of pride for Tibetans throughout the world.  Geshe has received dozens of congratulatory phone calls and letters from Tibetans and supporters of Tibet, and has been interviewed, along with some of the students who nominated him, by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, who will broadcast the news into Tibet itself.  Documentary filmmakers have asked for video footage of the awards ceremony so that they can include it in a documentary about Tibetans in America to be presented to His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his upcoming visit to Madison, Wisconsin.

Characteristically humble, when Geshe-la received the news that he had won the award, he shrugged and turned to a colleague, asking, “Is this a big deal?”  He was assured, “Yes, Geshe-la.  It’s a very big deal.”

We join the Tibetan people and the students, friends, and supporters of Geshe Dorjee in extending our congratulations for this well-deserved honor.