Maybe CTECs can actually make a difference. Five Northwestern faculty members have been awarded McCormick Awards for “outstanding teaching:“ David Chopp, Julia Stern and David Tolchinsky have been named the 2008 Charles Deering McCormick Professors of Teaching Excellence, while Lane Fenrich and Eric Schulz have been named the 2008 Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Lecturers. You have a whole summer to decide whether you want to take Schulz’s “turbo” intermediate microeconomics course or try Chopp’s Web-based tool identifying the best time — from a student viewpoint — for faculty office hours.

But enough with school. The sixth annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival brings two powerful films to Lincoln Park’s Cinematheque, off of the Fullerton El stop. Cocalero, a film about controversial Bolivian President Evo Morales, will be screened at 7 p.m. followed by White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 9 p.m. Both movies were nominated for the grand jury prize at Sundance Film Fest.

Downtown may be too far for some and that’s the beauty of the Block Cinema. It shows Fear Eats the Soul at 8 p.m. English and African American Studies professor Alexander Weheliye will hold a discussion after that. Fear Eats the Soul is a “short, tough tale… that reveals melodrama in the cheap loneliness and banality of everyday life.”

For an afternoon diversion, listen to Performance Studies Professor Esailama Diouf discuss African culture. Staging the African: Transnational Flows of West African Dance and Cultural Identity will be held at 620 Library Place in the seminar room at noon.