Ken Bain (Ph.D, University of Texas at Austin) is Vice Provost for Instruction, Director of the Research Academy for University Learning, and Professor of History at Montclair State University. He has been the founding director of teaching centers at Vanderbilt, Northwestern, and NYU, before coming to Montclair in 2006. 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 Do. He teaches courses on U.S. political history. His book on Best Teachers has been translated into nine languages, and it is the subject of a new documentary series to be broadcast in April 2008 on EBS

Charlie Cannon one of the subjects of the Best Teachers study, adjunct professor in three design departments at Rhode Island School of Design and in the Columbia University urban design program. 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.

Mary Ann Hopkins, (M.D., Harvard Medical School; M.Phil. Cambridge University) is an Associate Professor of Surgery and the Director of the Surgical Clerkship at New York University School of Medicine. She has been in charge of the medical student program for 4 years and has worked to overhaul the student curriculum. Her area of expertise is in the development and creation of innovative computer based teaching tools, and she has been one of the leading contributors to the ALEX Project an innovative and cutting-edge use of technology to create natural critical learning environments that promise to transform both medical and undergraduate education. Working with programmers, animators and video artists at the NYU School of Medicine, she has developed self-contained, web-based Surgical Interactive Multimedia Modules (SIMMs). These problem based modules are highly flexible as they are built from small, discrete educational units (videos, pdfs, web links, animations of surgery), which makes them adaptable to different cultures and medical problems. They emphasize professionalism, communication skills and critical decision making as opposed to rote learning. We will explore the application of similar approaches and technologies to advancing university learning on all levels of higher education and across the disciplines. She has also developed a Cyber Classroom which is an asynchronous small group adjunct, geared to teach students how to collaborate in patient care as well as how to lead a discussion. Her other main interest is in international humanitarian efforts. Since 1996, she has been a leading member of the organization Doctors Without Borders, winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. She has served as a surgeon in Sri Lanka, Burundi, and most recently the Democratic Republic of Congo.

To download a printer-friendly copy of the application form, click here

Melissa Harris-Lacewell (Ph.D., Duke) is associate professor of politics and african american studies, Princeton University. She is emerging as one of the most inventive and successful young teacher/scholars in the country. Her course on Disaster, Race, and American Politics, taught in the fall of 2006, created a superb example of a Natural Critical Learning Environment that had a profound and positive influence on the intellectual and personal development of her students. Her colleagues have called her "one of the most talented intellectuals of her generation." She has, another noted, a "flair for communicating ideas" combined with "energy and cleverness." Author of the award-winning book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, (Princeton 2004), she has had her academic research published in an array of top scholarly journals and edited volumes. Professor Harris-Lacewell's writings have been published also in newspapers throughout the country, and she has often been an expert commentator for television, radio, and print sources both in the United States and around the world, including a recent featured interview on Bill Moyer's Journal. Professor Harris-Lacewell is a dynamic public speaker who often addresses youth groups, colleges, churches and other organizations. She travels extensively and works on behalf of local and national efforts for justice. She has taught students from grade school to graduate school and has been recognized for her commitment to the classroom as a site of democratic deliberation on race. Her creative and dynamic teaching is also motivated by the practical political and racial issues of our time. In addition to all else, she is currently a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and she is the mother of a terrific daughter, Parker Lacewell. She will help us think about how we can create dynamic Natural Critical Learning Environments.

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 two master classes for the institute on improving communication techniques in the classroom, in public forums, and in conversations with students. Those sessions 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 sessions provide 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.

Other Outstanding Teachers by way of Videotape, including

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. An extraordinarily gifted educator who has also received numerous awards from students for her teaching, she teaches both medical students and undergraduates. We will see and discuss some video excerpts of her teaching