Rice History Professor to Be Honored at Cherry Award Banquet

Baylor University will honor Rice University history professor John B. Boles, the recipient of the 1999-2000 Robert Foster Cherry Chair for Distinguished Teaching, at the ninth annual Robert Foster Cherry Award Banquet, Monday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. in Barfield Drawing Room in the Bill Daniel Student Center. Tickets are $15.
During the banquet, Baylor President Robert B. Sloan Jr. will present a medallion to Boles, who is the William Pettus Hobby Professor of History at Rice. Boles also will receive an award of $100,000 and will present a series of lectures the week of Sept. 27. He will return to teach in residence at Baylor during the spring semester.
A Rice alumnus, Boles earned his doctorate from the University of Virginia. A renowned expert on United States Southern history, especially as it relates to antebellum social, cultural, religious, women's and black history, he is the author of The Great Revival, 1787-1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind; Black Southerners, 1619-1869; and The South Through Time: A History of an American Region. He also serves as managing editor of the Journal of Southern History.
Robert Foster Cherry graduated from Baylor in 1929 and entered the Baylor Law School in 1932, passing the state bar exam the following year. Before his death, he established the Cherry Award for Great Teachers and the Cherry Chair for Distinguished Teaching, which are awarded in alternating years, to honor great teachers. Recipients of the Cherry Chair have demonstrated extraordinary teaching abilities and a record of positive, inspiring and long-lasting effects on students. The recipients also are required to be scholars with national and international achievements.
For more information about the banquet, contact the Robert Foster Cherry Award office at 710-2923.