Six on faculty to share teaching methods when Teaching Week kicks off

Provost Richard Saller has named six faculty members as the first to be recognized as part of the Provost’s Teaching Week program intended to draw attention to the University’s excellent teachers.

The six honorees are Rachel Fulton, Associate Professor in History and the College; Bruce Lincoln, the Caroline E. Haskell Professor in the Divinity School, Douglas MacAyeal, Professor in Geophysical Sciences and the College; Ann McGill, the Sears Roebuck Professor in the Graduate School of Business; Paul Sally, Professor in Mathematics and the College; and Geoffrey Stone, Harry Kalven Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School and the College.

Saller selected the honorees after reviewing the recommendations of a committee consisting of Steve Gabel and Mary Harvey, both Associate Provosts, Stephen Kron, Chair of the Council on Teaching, and Keith Moffat and Martha Roth, both Deputy Provosts for Research and Education. The committee reviewed nominations that the deans of the College, divisions and professional schools had submitted.

Through the program, other faculty members will have a chance to learn about the teaching methods and skills of their colleagues, said Saller, who will host a round table discussion and reception open to the campus community, as well as a dinner for the six faculty honorees at the week’s conclusion. The Provost’s Teaching Week will begin Wednesday, Jan. 18, and end Friday, Jan. 27.

Fulton’s work involves the intellectual and cultural history of Europe in the Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on the history of Christianity and monasticism in the Latin West. She will be teaching the course History of European Civilization-2.

Lincoln’s research deals with issues of discourse, practice, power, conflict and the construction of social borders. He works in the religions of pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran, as well as African, Melanesian and Native-American traditions. He will be teaching Ethnogenic Myth, Collective Identity and Proto-Nationalism, and Religion and Culture of the Ancient Celts.

MacAyeal studies climate-related science using field data as the means to establish proper, rational models of the physical processes governing climate. He will be teaching the course Dynamic Environment.

McGill’s work focuses on consumer and manager decision-making, with special emphasis on causal explanations, comparative processes and the use of imagery in product choice. She will be teaching Marketing Strategies.

Sally’s mathematics research focuses on representation theory. Also active as an educator, he was the first Director of the University of Chicago Mathematics Project and is the author of college textbooks on mathematics. He will be teaching Honors Analysis.

Stone is an authority on civil rights, constitutional law and the First Amendment. He also studies freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion, academic freedom, the constitutionality of police using secret agents and informants, and the Supreme Court. He will be teaching Constitutional Law-2, Freedom of Speech.