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Ken Bain is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of History and Urban Education
at the University of the District of Columbia (beginning January 2012), He has been the founding director of teaching centers
and professor of history at Vanderbilt, Northwestern, NYU, and the Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair University.
He is the winner of four major teaching awards as a professor of history and the author of What the Best College Teachers
Do. His historical research and writing has centered on the development of United States foreign policy in the Middle
East. He is currently working on his third book on the U.S. and the Middle East, The Last
Journey Home: Franklin Roosevelt and the Middle East. He is also finishing a book entitled, What the Best College Students Did for Harvard UP, scheduled for publication in late 2012. He teaches courses
on U.S. political history. His book on Best Teachers has been translated into twelve languages, and it is the subject of a
documentary series broadcast in April 2008 on EBS. It has been one of the top selling books on higher education in the
last twenty-five years.
Charlie Cannon one of the subjects of the Best Teachers study, associate professor of industrial design
at Rhode Island School of Design and co-founder of LOCAL Architecture Research Design, Providence, R. I. His design
studios use interdisciplinary collaboration to solve large-scale environmental and infrastructure problems. His innovative
approach to creating natural critical learning environments for his students has won wide recognition and praise. His method
for creating collaboration across disciplines has garnered international attention.
Andrew Kaufman (Ph.D., Stanford University) is a Lecturer and Academic Community Engagement
Faculty Fellow in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and a Research Affiliate in the Curry School of Education
at the University of Virginia (UVa). An internationally recognized Russian literature scholar, he is author of Understanding
Tolstoy (The Ohio State University Press, 2011), Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled
Times (forthcoming with Free Press/Simon and Schuster), and numerous journal articles in Russia and the U.S. Dr. Kaufman’s
scholarship focuses on the vital relevance of Tolstoy and nineteenth-century Russian literature to the social, moral, and
spiritual problems of today, and he has been invited to lecture and put on workshops about these issues at the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Tolstoy Museum and
Estate, as well as at universities, colleges, high schools, community libraries, prisons and juvenile correctional centers.
In 2009 Dr. Kaufman created the course, “Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Community Leadership,”
in which undergraduate students at UVa facilitate discussions about Russian literature at Virginia juvenile treatment and
correctional centers. Featured on NPR, in Inside Higher Ed, and elsewhere, the course has attracted the
attention of academia nationally and internationally, because it makes a compelling, evidence-based case for the academic,
personal, and social benefits of a humanities education at a time of growing concern about the value of the humanities in
the academy. Currently the subject of a grant-funded, cross-disciplinary research study, “Books Behind Bars”
offers an original, replicable model for creating a rich Natural Critical Learning Environment through service learning,
learning by doing, and student community engagement.
Jim Lang is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the College Honors
Program at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. He is the author of On Course: A Week-by-Week
Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (Harvard UP, 2008) and Life on the
Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year (Johns Hopkins UP, 2005). He writes a monthly column on teaching and
learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has been publishing his writing
on higher education for the past dozen years. He gives frequent lectures and workshop on teaching, learning and academic
integrity in higher education. His newest book, to be published by Harvard UP in 2013, will guide faculty members
towards course designs and teaching strategies that promote academic integrity on campus and (nearly) cheating-free classes.
In the fall of 2011, he was appointed to the Fulbright Specialists Roster in higher education.
To download a printer-friendly copy of the application form, click here
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Jeanette Norden (Ph.D, Vanderbilt), Professor of Neurosciences in the College of Arts and Sciences and
Professor of Cell Biology in the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt University and one of the subjects of the Best Teachers
study. She was the first holder of the University Endowed Chair of Teaching Excellence (1994-1997) and also the first recipient
of the School of Medicine's Excellence in Teaching Award (2000). She is an extraordinarily gifted educator who has also
received numerous awards from students for her teaching. She has been named Best Lecturer in the Medical School, and she has
been a multiple recipient of the Medical School's Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award (1993, 1994, 1995,1996) and the
Jack Davies Award, presented in recognition of basic science professors who uphold the highest standards of teaching excellence
(1992, 1994,1997, 1999). Even early in her career, she was recognized by the students by being awarded the Shovel (1985) by
the graduating seniors as the professor who had the most positive influence on them in their 4 years of study. Most recently,
she received the Robert J. Glaser Award for Outstanding Contributions to Medical Education, a national award from the American
Association of Medical Colleges and the medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha (2000). Her course in Neurosciences to second
year students is considered a model course. She has presented invited programs throughout the United States on education reform
and acts as a consultant to many different kinds of schools. She maintained an active and NIH-funded research laboratory from
1979-1997 before taking the position of Director of Medical Education in the Department of Cell Biology at Vanderbilt. In
addition to her teaching in the medical school, she teaches a highly lauded course in the neurosciences for undergraduate
students in the College of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt. We will explore and analyze how she creates a natural critical
learning environment in both a large lecture class and a smaller seminar.
Ann Woodworth (M.A., Northwestern) is Associate Professor of Theatre and the Charles Deering McCormick
Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University, and one of the subjects of the Best Teachers study. Her work
on the stage and in directing have won strong praise in the theater, but she has also been one of the most successful and
highly acclaimed teachers in the United States, especially recognized for her general insights into the art and craft of teaching
and for her work with other faculty members in helping them achieve impressive improvements in their ability to communicate
with students. She will conduct a master class for the institute on improving communication techniques in the classroom, in
public forums, and in conversations with students. The session sparkle with excitement, and even seem like a bit of magic
as she coaxes from participants a level of achievement that many of them have never imagined that they might be able to reach.
But she has also dissected her own approaches and she shares in those classes the secrets of her techniques. Past institute
participants have reported that the session provided them with both improvements in communication ability and important ideas
about working successfully one on one with students. The master class concept has proved to be a powerful approach. Professor
Woodworth has been a Fellow of the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence since 1993.
Chad Richardson (Ph.D., University of Texas) , professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Pan
American, and director of the Borderlife Research Project, was one of the subjects of the book, What the Best College Teachers
Do. A highly successful teacher and researcher for more than thirty years, he is the 2007-2008 recipient of the UT System
Chancellors’ Award for Outstanding Teaching and nominee for the Minne Piper Award given annually to the outstanding
college teacher in Texas. He has been enormously successful in creating natural critical learning environments in which his
students engage in research, even in introductory courses, and produce high quality work. His goal in teaching has always
been to help students discover that they can learn, understand and even create knowledge. He and his students have published
two major studies on border life, Batos, Bollillos, Pochos and Pelados and On the Edge of the Law. He will conduct a seminar
on fostering inductive learning and engaging students in research, even when those students enter the university with less
than ideal academic backgrounds. Professor Richardson will not appear in person in 2012, but we
will explore his work.
Other Outstanding Teachers by way of Videotape
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