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2008 Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching AwardsThe 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 2009 awards will be solicited from economics department heads, from each institution in the southern part of the United States, in the spring of 2009. 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 2008 are:
The winners were announced at the 2008 meeting of the Southern Economic Association in Washington, DC on Saturday, November 22, and each received a plaque and a cash award. Citations for the 2008 recipientsJulia HeathDr. Heath has made far-reaching contributions to economics instruction throughout her 22-year career at the University of Memphis as a classroom teacher, academic researcher, department chairperson, and Center Director. She has received multiple teaching awards from the University of Memphis, as well as additional recognition from the Tennessee Bankers Association, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and the Institute for Financial Literacy. She has developed innovative courses and taught at every level, from principles to Ph.D. theory classes, all with exceptional teaching evaluations. Her scholarship has also made significant contributions to economics education, through a number of research articles, some funded by Excellence in Economic Education grants from the U.S. Department of Education, to study economic education and efficient delivery systems. Many of Dr. Heath's contributions to economics education have occurred outside the walls of the University, through her work as the Director of the Center for Economic Education, which she began in 2002. The purpose of the Center is to expand economics beyond college-level classrooms to K-12 educators, and by extension, to their students. Through the Center, she provides the training that gives even kindergarten teachers the ability to infuse economics into their classrooms, integrating economics into reading, math, language arts, geography, history and civics. Dr. Heath has also conducted the statewide Tennessee Economics Challenge, a knowledge-bowl type competition for high school students. She has established a debt counseling center on the University of Memphis campus which provides assistance to faculty, staff and students. Moreover, she started a peer-mentor program, as well as Tiger P.A.W.$, that trains high-ability students to make campus presentations about issues of personal finance. She began Financial Literacy Week, a series of campus-wide events promoting awareness of economic and personal finance issues among the student body at the University of Memphis. She helped to create the Smart Tennessee Program, a statewide economic and financial literacy program, providing K-8 teachers with the professional development and materials they need to integrate economic and financial education into their curricula. Finally, Dr. Heath is currently deeply involved in efforts to establish an economics and finance charter high school in Memphis. We compliment Dr. Heath for her exceptional efforts and wide-ranging achievements.
Charles HoltProfessor Holt is a superb teacher of economics educators as well as an outstanding classroom instructor of economics. He is renowned for the interactive games and experiments that he has developed to assist economists teaching students the fundamental principles of how markets function. Through these efforts, he has dramatically reduced the cost to professors of incorporating experiments into their teaching of economics. The result has been that countless students, all over the world, have learned first-hand and in a laboratory setting when the experimental results do and do not closely correspond to the assumptions found in standard economics textbooks. Moreover, the web-based software that Professor Holt developed to teach game theory allows students to learn that the game theoretic predictions of human behavior are strikingly accurate in some situations but perform badly in others. These provocative games encourage students to reflect on why behavior might diverge from predictions obtained when assuming perfect knowledge and rationality, and they open the door to incorporating insights from psychology and sociology into the study of economics. Professor Holt’s passion for teaching economics has also reached out to touch new audiences in recent years. For instance, he works to acquaint high school teachers with how game theory and experiments can be used in their classrooms to help their students develop critical analysis skills, along with a basic understanding of how social scientists investigate questions of interest. In addition, he has been teaching public officials in the Federal Communications Commission how to design auctions to allocate broadcast licenses. Professor Holt has also contributed important research on economic education. He has published 20 articles related to teaching economics including three in the Journal of Economic Education, nine in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and several in the Southern Economic Journal. Professor Holt’s is such an ardent advocate of economic instruction as a central part of a sound liberal arts education that his presidential address for the Southern Economic Association in 2002, devoted to the State of Economic Science, included a substantial section on the effective teaching of economic insights. Professor Holt is poised to make further contributions to the teaching of economics including playing a lead role in an interdisciplinary project involving economists, political scientists and anthropologists, to develop a “virtual collaboratory” for experiments in social science. He has also received funding to develop teaching modules using “clickers” to run laboratory experiments during class, so students get almost instantaneous feedback on the hypotheses they are examining. Professor Holt is an important and dynamic contributor to economic education as a scholar and teacher of both students and faculty. He has left a valued foot-print on how economic educators go about their work. We thank and applaud him for
his accomplishments. Past Recipients2007 Richard J. Cebula (Atlantic Armstrong State University) 2006 Sheryl Ball
(Virginia Tech) 2005 Steven L.
Cobb (University of North Texas) 2004 Thomas
J. Nechyba (Duke University) 2002 William
Darity, Jr. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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