Email This StoryAward brings teacher to BU
Oct. 15, 2009
By Laura Patton
Reporter
The second of three finalists for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching gave a presentation Wednesday to fulfill the requirements for being a Cherry finalist.
Dr. Elliott West is an alumni distinguished professor of history at the University of Arkansas. West and the other two finalists are required to give a presentation at Baylor and at their home university in order to possibly become the next Cherry Award recipient.
West, who has been teaching at Arkansas for 30 years, is a "pre-eminent historian of the American West," said Dr. Michael Parrish, Linden G. Bowers professor of American history, in an introduction to West's lecture. West is currently on leave from the University of Arkansas on a research fellow at Huntington Library in California.
Like the presentation from the first finalist, Dr. Roger Rosenblatt, West focused most of his lecture on stories and their place in schools. His approach focused more on how he uses stories in his teaching methods to engage his students and help them see more sides to history.
"I firmly believe stories are very important and very powerful," West said in his lecture. "One thing I know best about stories is we are compelled to tell them. It is part of being human. What I do as a teacher is first try to convince students that history is the biggest story of all."
West defines history as having "the power to tell us who we are."
Wednesday's presentation was held in a style of how West would oversee one of his classes. The lecture was titled "The West Before Lewis and Clark: Three Lives," and included the stories of three people, ordinary in the context of their times, whose lives took extraordinary turns.
Their stories contradict the common assumption that before Lewis and Clark the American West had been uninhabited by civilized man. There are no surviving images of these people, and one man doesn't even have a name to accompany his story, but they show that there is more than what we have been led to believe: Lives and societies flourished before Lewis and Clark "tamed the West."
This is not an isolated example of history being multi-sided. West said he "took one American story and complicated it, to encourage [others] to complicate the rest of it." West's goal is for his students to think of more than the big names of American history -- that they explore as many sides of the story so that they can fully understand the complexity of the story.
The recipient of the Cherry Award will teach in residence at Baylor during either the fall of 2010 or the spring of 2011. In an e-mail to the Lariat, Dr. Heidi Hornik, Chair of the Robert Foster Cherry Award Committee, said any professor in the English-speaking world may be nominated.
"The intention is to bring the finest teachers to the Baylor campus to teach undergraduate classes for a semester." Hornik said. "Their method is usually enjoyed by students, and is an inspiration to faculty."
The last Cherry recipient in the history department was Dr. John Boles, from Rice university. Dr. Jeffery Hamilton, chairman of the history department, is hoping for the appointment of the Cherry Award to go to West.
"We would be absolutely delighted to have West in the department," Hamilton said. "We don't have a specialist in the American West, and we think students would be very interested in what he has to offer. We would be thrilled to have him."
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