A Teaching Journey Shaped by Transformation: Yumiko Shimabukuro Receives Prestigious Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching

Yumiko Shimabukuro, founding director of the Urban and Social Policy Concentration for the Executive MPA and core faculty of the Picker Center for Executive Education at Columbia SIPA, has received Columbia University's prestigious Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Each year, only five professors university-wide receive the award, which was established in 1996 to honor the university’s best teachers. She will receive the award during the University Commencement on May 21.

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Shimabukuro becomes just the fourth member of the SIPA faculty to receive this recognition. Faculty winners receive a certificate signed by the president of the University, a formal citation written by their department, and an honorarium of $20,000. Prior to this recognition, Shimabukuro received the Harvard Teaching Excellence Award in 2013 and the SIPA Outstanding Teaching Award in 2016. At SIPA, Shimabukuro teaches on topics ranging from social welfare policy and political economy to global leadership development. Her innovative teaching approach includes distinctive visual thinking exercises that connect people to policy by asking students to draw a worker in distress and identify how deficiencies in social welfare policies might manifest as physical ailments. These approaches allow students to examine problems and solutions from the inside out, beginning with human physiology and working outward to policy implications, fostering both analytical skills and compassionate understanding. 

Beyond her classroom teaching, Shimabukuro has built an impressive body of work that bridges academic research and practical application. Her recent book with Picker Center Executive Director Arvid Lukauskas, Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024), challenges conventional narratives about economic development in the region. She is currently completing a manuscript entitled Building an Inegalitarian Welfare State: The Impact of Dualistic Coordinated Capitalism & Elite-Made Democracy in Japan. 

Many students have found inspiration in Shimabukuro's award-winning professional development book, Dream Rut: Navigating Your Path Forward (Wise Ink, 2023), which offers insights into overcoming obstacles while pursuing one's dreams. Moreover, her acclaimed career development workshops empower students to discover and refine their career visions, values, and interests. “Beyond the coursework, Professor Shimabukuro's commitment to her students' professional and personal development is a distinctive contribution to SIPA,” said Tracey Pauline Albert, a current MPA student at SIPA.

In this SIPA News Q&A, Professor Shimabukuro discusses her journey from struggling student to award-winning educator and offers insights into her teaching philosophy.

Can you share what sparked your passion for teaching?

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Growing up in a Japanese community in the Philippines, my parents were worried that I was slow to reach developmental milestones, especially in speech and reading. At school, I excelled only in sports. Every classroom felt like an empty, dead space. At that time in Japanese schools, diagnosis and treatment for learning disabilities and individualized educational programming for academically delayed kids were non-existent. Because there was no learning taking place, I was bored to death. I snuck out of class a lot to play with the tadpoles in the pond and explored the world of bugs and critters in the hidden corners of the schoolyard. 

But that all changed when I hit junior high school. The school officials told my parents that, given my exceedingly poor academic record, I had no future in the Japanese education system and suggested a move to a private international school. I vividly remember my parents scrambling to gather the money we had to give me a second chance. And boy, that changed everything. 

My teachers were patient, and I got tailored individual attention. And there, I met a transformative teacher who taught me the radiant joy of learning and teaching. Yes, teaching by a struggling kid like me! In one class, she spontaneously asked me to stand up and teach a lesson from a book that we were reading. She came up to me afterward and said what an amazing lesson I had given to the class. She activated me and saw something in me that I couldn’t see. I try to pass on that gift she gave me through her impactful and inclusive teaching in every class I teach today.

Your journey from Wall Street, after attaining your MIA at SIPA, to becoming an award-winning professor at SIPA is fascinating. What motivated this transition, and what surprised you most about academic and university teaching life?

I needed a visa to stay in the US, so the finance world provided a temporary home for my career after SIPA. However, I wasn’t really growing, and I found that Excel and making money weren’t putting a sparkle in my step. So, I went back to what I loved to do. 

I truly admired so many of the professors I had, so going back to school to pursue a doctorate really felt like a homecoming. But the road was tough, and my individual efforts weren’t adding up. What surprised me the most about academic and university teaching and research life is how much you need help from others to make a career out of it. Many people helped me along my journey. Even this teaching award took a whole village.

Many students describe your teaching style as dynamic and engaging. What advice would you give to new faculty or instructors on making complex policy topics accessible and interesting for students from diverse backgrounds?

I have taught nearly ten different courses with varying class sizes across different modalities, disciplines, languages, and continents, so I have made many mistakes and learned a few things along the way. In my book project, Transferable Teaching Skills (under contract with Oxford University Press), I share some of my tips about teaching students from diverse backgrounds. One is to go back to the basics. All professors should learn about the science behind learning; they do this in K-12 teacher training but not in higher education. There are many valuable insights from cognitive science, psychology, behavioral science, and the field of education itself that are useful for any teaching context. My second suggestion is to use more visuals in the classroom to overcome language barriers and elicit diverse perspectives. Complex and non-linear analyses can be more accessible through visuals than through text. The third piece of advice is to have a class activity at the start that sets the intention, centralizes attention, and begins harnessing that intellectual energy before diving into the lecture. So, all aboard before taking off. 

You are a lecturer, director, author, cofounder, consultant, thesis advisor, yoga teacher, executive education leader and professional development trainer — how have you managed to wear so many professional hats and juggle it all? 

The life of a professional octopus like me can be intense, so I do my best to avoid burnout and find joy in little things. I do arts and crafts with my teaching assistants or go for a long walk to relieve stress. But I could use more sleep and would love a longer vacation.

Any plans on how you will spend this $20,000 prize? 

Using the award money, I’m creating “The Happy Little Grant,” which aims to make exciting and fun moments in a budget-busting city a bit easier to reach for students facing financial hardship. I envision them attending a hit Broadway show or concert, indulging at a fancy restaurant with a friend, or doing anything else that makes for a happy day. I'm incredibly excited to get this off the ground and see our students enjoying these experiences when we launch in the fall!