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2005
Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Awards
The Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished
Teaching Award from the Southern Economic Association annually honors one
or more faculty members for outstanding contributions to economics education.
Nominations for the 2006 awards will be solicited from economics department
heads, from each institution in the southern part of the United States,
in the spring of 2006. Nominees who are not selected are automatically placed
in the pool of nominees for the subsequent year for a period of three years.
Ken Elzinga, Robert C. Taylor Professor of Economics at the University
of Virginia,--first recipient of the Cavaliers’ Distinguished
Teaching Professorship--is widely recognized as one of the most accomplished,
effective,
and influential educators in the economics profession during a distinguished
teaching and research career at the University of Virginia, that has
spanned
over 35 years. Ken is creative and versatile in the classroom sharing
his thoughts effectively with large groups of students studying the
principles
of economics, and using the Socratic Method, when working with students
in a more advanced setting. He is a pioneer in the use of literature
to
explore economic reasoning which led to his writing murder mysteries
that can be solved by careful economic analysis. Ken’s style
of instruction and commitment to helping students develop an understanding
of and appreciation
for economic reasoning and insights serve as an inspiration for economic
educators, so it is fitting for exemplary economic educators to be
honored
with an award in his name.
The winners for 2006 are:
- Sheryl Ball (Virginia Tech)
- Stephen Buckles (University of Missouri)
- Russell Sobel (West Virginia University)
The winners were announced at the 2006 meeting of the Southern Economic
Association in Charleston, SC on Sunday, November 19,
and each received a plaque
and a cash award.
Citations for the 2006 recipients
Sheryl Ball
Professor Sheryl Ball has a long record of teaching effectiveness both
in the classroom, and in developing methods to improve instruction. In
her tenure at Virginia Tech, she has developed numerous new courses,
both within the economics department and interdisciplinary courses in
the School of Business and with the school of Engineering. She supervises
numerous undergraduate research projects each year, and her teaching
evaluations – both from students and peers– are uniformly
excellent.
Prof. Ball has also devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to
developing new ways to incorporate interactive exercises and classroom
experiments into a range of courses. Her most notable achievement in
this area is her development (with Catherine Eckel and Scott Midkiff)
of an innovative system that allows for complex computer-aided experiments
in ordinary classrooms. Using this technology, an instructor can run
experiments in even large classes without the effort and confusion that
come with “paper based” classroom experiments. Ball and her
co-investigators have received funding from both the Mellon Foundation
and the National Science Foundation to continue developing this system.
For these efforts, Prof. Ball was a co-recipient of Virginia Tech’s
Xcaliber award in 2005, which recognizes outstanding uses of technology
to improve instruction.
Dr. Ball is also very concerned with measuring the impact of these new
methods on student learning. Her research in this area was recognized
by Virginia Tech with the Diggs Teaching Scholar award, which is awarded
annually to a faculty member who does outstanding work on the scholarship
of teaching. As a Diggs Scholar, Prof. Ball makes regular presentations
on teaching both to graduate students and to faculty. She has published
several articles on the scholarship of teaching, including one on the
WITS project that appeared in the 2006 AEA Papers and Proceedings. We
commend Prof. Ball for her efforts.
Stephen Buckles
Professor Stephen Buckles is an exemplary teacher at all levels of the
undergraduate curriculum, from the large lecture in the introductory
courses to the small seminar for seniors. He has won awards for teaching
and for service to economic education. In addition to being an excellent
teacher, he is an innovator in classroom techniques and a promoter of
improvements in the assessment of student learning.
His forthcoming textbook for the introductory course promotes a novel
approach for the first course. He has published numerous essays on topics
in the teaching of economics spanning thirty years and he has served
on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economic Education for over
a decade. He led the National Council for Economic Education from 1989
to 1994, a non-profit organization that promotes improvement in teaching
economics. He chaired the College Board’s first Economics Advanced
Placement Committee and led the effort to include economics in the National
Assessment of Educational Progress.
Buckles won several prizes for teaching at the University of Missouri,
and a Choice Award for teaching at Vanderbilt. In 1998, the National
Council on Economic Education recognized him with its William A. Forbes
Award and again in 2002, with its Marvin Bower award, recognizing his
activities in national economic assessment, national standards, and international
economic education programs. We commend him for his remarkable effort
and achievements.
Russell Sobel
Professor Russell Sobel is an outstanding classroom teacher. Since coming
to West Virginia in 1994 he has won eight teaching awards in the College
of Business and Economics. Part of the reason for success in large lecture
sections at WVU is his development of a ‘walkie-talkie’ approach
that allows students to control the pace of his presentation by asking
him to pause during his lectures. Dr. Sobel spends considerable time
thinking about effective economic education in part because he is co-author
(with James Gwartney, Richard Stroup and David MacPherson) of the widely
used principles textbook Economics: Private and Public Choice.
In addition to undergraduate instruction Russ teaches a graduate public
finance class in which students are required to write a series of papers.
Notably, over a dozen of the papers written for this class have been
published in academic journals, including Public Choice, The Journal
of Law an Economics, Economic Inquiry, Public Finance Review, The Review
of Regional Studies, Cato Journal and the Journal of Public Finance.
Dr. Sobel cares very deeply about teaching basic economic principles to everyone,
not just business and economics students. He has developed and teaches a class
for K-12 teachers every summer that exposes them to the basic principles of
economics. The course involves morning lectures and afternoon field trips to
a forest-related operation. The latter include tours of a logging operation,
a sawmill, a paper-making plant, and finally a hardwood flooring plant. As
a result of these tours, teachers get to see economics in action, from property
rights encouraging good stewardship in the forest, and to the way taxes, regulations,
and labor force issues determine firms’ capital investment decisions.
We commend Professor Sobel for his efforts.
Past Recipients
2005 Steven L.
Cobb (University of North Texas)
Tom McCaleb (Florida
State University)
2004 Thomas
J. Nechyba (Duke University)
L. Wayne Plumly,
Jr. (Valdosta State University)
2003 Craufurd
Goodwin (Duke University)
Dennis O'Toole (Virginia
Commonwealth University)
Jason White (Northwest
Missouri State University)
2002 William
Darity, Jr. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
William C. Wood
(James Madison University)
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