Williams College's Robert Bell Named 2004 Outstanding College Professor
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Nov. 18, 2004 The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education have named Robert Bell "Outstanding Baccalaureate College Professor of the Year."
Bell holds the William R. Kenan, Jr. chair at Williams College, awarded to a faculty member "whose enthusiasm for good teaching, breadth of interest and achievement show promise of a creative relationship not only with undergraduates but also with young faculty."
In announcing the awards, Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation said of them, "Through their contribution to excellence in teaching and extraordinary dedication to their students, they have dignified and elevated the profession of teaching and created a legacy of knowledge and practice that others can build upon." The awards were presented in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. today (Thursday).
"All of us at Williams and so many elsewhere look to Bob Bell as the vibrant embodiment of all that a great teacher should be, and as a model of professional commitment, personal generosity, and joyful learning" said Stephen Fix, the Robert G. Scott '68 Professor of English at Williams.
Bell began teaching at Williams College in 1972, where he teaches courses on Jane Austen and George Eliot, Shakespeare, and James Joyce, as well as general courses on poetry, the history of the novel, and English literature.
"In my teaching I strive to demonstrate the efficacy and pleasure of generous attention to literature," says Bell, "to encourage disciplined, imaginative responses to language and to give pure, sustained attention to the students' reading and writing."
In 1994, he was named an Exemplary Teacher by the American Association of Higher Education, the same year he founded the Project for Effective Teaching at Williams, a mentoring program for new faculty, which he continues to direct. The project brings young faculty members together for weekly discussions, symposia, and conferences on the challenges and opportunities of teaching.
Ronadh Cox, associate professor of geosciences, describes Bell as "a fantastic professor, who has made a huge difference not only in the lives of his undergraduate students but in the lives of his junior faculty colleagues. I've never met anybody quite like him, and consider myself lucky to have had his mentorship while I was an assistant professor."
"Teaching is part art, part technique, and part personality and character," Bell says. "Yet teachers can also learn better how to proceed, how to evaluate their own effectiveness, how to make changes, how to become more dynamic lecturers and perhaps more charismatic listeners: what other teachers do to reach and move undergraduates."
His teaching has earned numerous awards, including the national Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teachers in 1998. Bell's former student Heather Brubaker '03 says, "His invocation at the end of every class, 'I'll be in my office! Come see me, I love to hang out!' is famous both for its sincerity and its rate of return. It is an indication of the passion and skill with which he draws intellectual engagement out of the classroom and ties the bonds of continued exchange throughout the college community. I have never felt more intellectually necessary to a classroom and a community."
He is the author of "Critical Essays on Kingsley Amis" and the forthcoming "Reader's Guide to David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest'." His book "Jocoserious Joyce: The Fate of Folly in 'Ulysses'" was describe as "Magical original, incisive, and enlightening criticism, a fresh approach to 'Ulysses' that analyses the levels and depths of its humor in a language that is consciously witty."
Bell is a remarkably productive scholar whose work has earned him a wide and appreciative audience. He has contributed to the American Scholar, Modern Language Quarterly, English Literary History, and the Milton Quarterly, among others. He is a frequent presenter at academic conferences and has served as editor-in-chief of the Berkshire Review and edited "Notes and Annotation to Joyce's Hades Episode." He was host of The Book Show, syndicated by Northeast Public Radio (1996 to 1998), and has published and broadcast scores of humor pieces.
Born in 1946, Bell was raised in Belmont and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was awarded a Danforth Foundation Fellowship for exceptional promise in college teaching, 1967-1972.
The U.S. Professors of the Year program, created in 1981, is the only national initiative specifically designed to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring. This years winners were selected from a pool of nearly 300 nominees. The Council on the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) assembled two preliminary judging panels earlier this year that evaluated the nominees in four areas: 1) impact on and involvement with undergraduate students; 2) scholarly approach to teaching and learning; 3) contributions to undergraduate education within the institution and community; and 4) support from colleagues and students. CASE then forwarded a list of finalists to the Carnegie Foundation, which performed the final round of judging and awards the $5,000 prize to each national winner.