My Last Lecture Award

In 1955, notable UCLA professors were given the chance to put all of their life lessons and advice for students into one “last lecture.”

In 2010, the Alumni Scholars Club (ASC) brought back this tradition through the Marty Sklar My Last Lecture Award. This award was established to honor a UCLA professor who is an inspiration to students.

On May 13, ASC will host an award ceremony where the winning professor will give an inspiring lecture on the question posed to the original lecturers 70 years ago: What would you tell your audience if you had but one lecture to give – your last lecture on this earth?

My Last Lecture 2025

This past winter quarter, through an online nomination process followed by a vote between the top three nominees, the student body selected Dr. Steve Bennoun as the inspiring professor worthy of this year's honor. Register below to attend Dr. Bennoun's inspiring lecture on Tuesday, May 13 from 7-8:30 p.m. at DeNeve Lecture Auditorium. For questions, please email gbrown@support.ucla.edu. 

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2025 Marty Sklar My Last Lecture Award Recipient

Dr. Steve Bennoun is an assistant teaching professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology, specializing in enhancing student learning in mathematics and science courses. He focuses on teaching mathematics courses that have strong connections with biology and the life sciences, as well as using active learning in his courses. He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in mathematics from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and completed his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Bennoun served as an active learning lecturer in the department of mathematics at Cornell University, where he focused on integrating active learning strategies into mathematics curricula and assessing their impact on student learning.

Dr. Bennoun has a strong interest in understanding which teaching methods best support student learning and assessing the impact of curriculum reforms. Additionally, he studies faculty development programs to understand factors that can help instructors adopt evidence-based teaching methods. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, he currently works on evaluating how one can implement interleaving, the idea of mixing the practice of different topics, in undergraduate mathematics courses. His publications include, but are not limited to, “Establishing Consistent Active Learning in a Calculus I Course,” “Bridging the Gap Between the Biology and Calculus by Teaching Modeling” and “Students’ Understanding of Time Series and Trajectory of Solutions to Differential Equations.”

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