Baylor names finalists for 2016 Cherry Award, the nation’s largest teaching award

Great teaching is a part of Baylor’s DNA. Among the many ways Baylor invests in and promotes great teaching is the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching; the Cherry Award not only honors great teachers, but invests in their work with a gift of $250,000. It’s the largest monetary gift for teaching presented by a college or university, and the only award of its kind in higher education.

Last week, Baylor named the three finalists for the 2016 Cherry Award. The distinguished trio was selected out of over 100 nominees; the eventual winner will not only reap the financial benefits of the award, but will spend a semester teaching in residence at Baylor.

The 2016 finalists:

— Dr. Teresa C. Balser, professor of soil and water science at the University of Florida. Balser’s long list of honors includes awards for both her environmental work and classroom teaching. She was named 2010 Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and was recently chosen as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair to India for her life sciences education work. Her research has focused on understanding how ecosystems respond to disturbances, and to improving undergraduate and graduate level student engagement.

— Dr. Michelle Rae Hebl, professor of psychology and management at Rice University. Hebl, an applied psychologist who has taught at Rice since 1998, has focused on diversity and discrimination, and the subtle ways in which discrimination is displayed and addressed by individuals or organizations. She has won more than a dozen awards for teaching, including five George R. Brown Prizes for Superior Teaching at Rice, and has twice been nominated for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s (CASE) Professor of the Year Award.

— Lisa Russ Spaar, professor of English and creative writing at the University of Virginia. Spaar has served at Virginia for more than two decades, and she is a prolific author of poems, books, essays for newspapers and journals and more. Her many awards have cited both her writing and teaching; accolades include the Outstanding Faculty Award of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers.

Each finalist will lecture at Baylor this fall, with the winning professor then announced next spring. The winner will then teach in residence at Baylor during the fall 2016 or spring 2017 semesters, succeeding Dr. Meera Chandrasekhar, the 2014 Cherry Award winner, who is teaching physics this semester at Baylor.

Sic ’em, Cherry Award Finalists!