The 2026 Outstanding Teaching Awards: Ryan Voogt

Each Wednesday this summer, UKNow is highlighting a winner of the University of Kentucky’s 2026 Outstanding Teaching Awards, given by the Office for Faculty Advancement with the Office of the Provost.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 15, 2026) — Ryan Voogt, Ph.D., the director of undergraduate studies and a senior lecturer in the University of Kentucky Lewis Honors College, was among 10 educators honored with the UK’s 2026 Outstanding Teaching Awards.

These awards identify and recognize UK faculty and graduate teaching assistants who demonstrate special dedication to student achievement. Recipients were selected via nomination and reviewed by a selection committee based in the UK Provost’s Office for Faculty Advancement and the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching.

Voogt received his Ph.D. in history from UK in 2017. He received an M.A. in Russian and East European studies from the University of Michigan in 2010 and a B.S. in engineering from Calvin College in 2004. Using Russian-, Romanian- and Hungarian-language sources, Voogt’s dissertation explored what kind of religiosity was acceptable to communist officials in Romania and the Soviet Union after World War II. His other fields of interest and teaching include Western Europe, the Holocaust and other genocides in Europe, agriculture, the environment, and society and culture.

As part of this summer series, UKNow connected with Voogt to learn more about his experience and approach to teaching.

UKNow: How would you describe your area of expertise and why is the work important right now?

Voogt: I consider the work I do as an expert and as a generalist to be critical right now. My expertise on the history of modern Europe, including things like communism, the Holocaust and how European countries have been organizing themselves politically and socially continues to be relevant today. The courses answer key questions about how people treat each other and organize themselves, but just as important for me is my skill as a generalist, as I combine my background in engineering with history and social sciences to help students think about how we construct knowledge, decide what’s true and navigate society every day.

UKNow: What core principles guide your approach to teaching, and how do those show up in your classroom or learning environments?

Voogt: I believe that when people feel comfortable, they are more likely to participate — to ask and to share. However, we can’t grow unless we are stretched, so the heart of my teaching is living at the point of tension between being comfortable, while being asked to go deeper and further. It makes the classroom feel like a warm, welcoming and friendly environment, but also an exciting one that stimulates the mind.

UKNow: Can you share a moment — inside or outside the classroom — that affirmed the value of your work as an educator? 

Voogt: Thankfully, there are many small moments that affirm what I’m doing as an educator, but I have one moment that I think back to. Last year I took students on an education abroad trip to Hungary and Romania, places I’ve spent some serious time, and there we were, riding together in a series of horse carts driven by people I had met in a Transylvanian village years ago, atop the hills overlooking a gorgeous setting down below with the wind in our hair, and all just laughing and taking it all in. I thought how amazing it is that I have the privilege to provide these kinds of opportunities for students, sparking their wonder and curiosity and enjoying each other’s company along the way. About 10 of those same students then signed up for a class with me a semester later, and they all sat together to learn about communism in Eastern Europe. That full circle moment really solidified for me the joy of the work that I do.

UKNow: What do you hope your students take with them after they leave your courses?

Voogt: I would hope that from my courses, students would be hungrier to learn than before and that they would be more inspired to care about the people and world around them, as well as themselves. I would want them to see the world as an inexhaustibly deep well to discover. Last, I would want them to leave my classes with more friends than they started. It’s often a tough world, so having friends makes the journey doable and even wonderful.

UKNow: What does receiving the Outstanding Teaching Award mean to you? 

Voogt: As teachers, we don’t always have a visible product to be proud of. Students come and go, and you can’t often tell that they’ve grown because of you or your class. All great teachers pour their heart into their work and can doubt that all the striving is worthwhile. An award like this reminds me that the work we do gets noticed.