GREENSBORO – Dr. Russ McDonald, professor of English at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, was named the 2003 North Carolina Professor of the Year in the annual competition conducted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

McDonald was selected from nearly 400 nominees nationwide, and the award recognizes his dedication to teaching and commitment to students.  He will be honored at a campuswide reception Monday, Dec. 8, at 3:30 p.m. in Ballroom A of Elliott University Center.

“He deserves national recognition for an approach to teaching which has captivated the imagination and broadened the understanding of hundreds of undergraduates,” wrote Dr. A Edward Uprichard, provost at UNCG, in a letter nominating McDonald for this award.

While the provost nominated him for the honor, current and former students, colleagues, and peers from other institutions sent letters of support. Nomination materials included the McDonald’s teaching logs and course descriptions, as well as personal statements describing his teaching and mentoring techniques, courses or curricula he created, or steps he took to extend the learning process beyond the classroom.

McDonald has taught classes on poetry, drama and Shakespeare at UNCG since 1992. He said that his overriding teaching goal is “to entice others into the realm of the imagination, to instill in them an enduring taste for the pleasures and rewards of the written word.”

“In all of my courses, from Introduction to Poetry to the Shakespeare Seminar, I seek to make myself unnecessary by transferring to my students both a passion for language and the tools for delighting in it. Ideally, they become their own instructors,” McDonald wrote.

His book, “The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: an Introduction with Documents,” is widely used in undergraduate courses in the United States and the United Kingdom. The book grew out of a series of lectures he delivered to high school English teachers at the Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute, where he was the Co-Director and Head Scholar from 1985-1994.

A former winner of the Dean’s Merit Award of Teaching Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences, McDonald was recognized with an Award for Teaching Excellence by the UNC Board of Governors in April.

McDonald is a graduate of Duke University and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to UNCG, he taught at the University of Rochester (New York), where he was awarded the Student Associations Teaching Award in 1985 and the Dean’s Student Life Award in 1981; the University of Hawaii; and Mississippi State University. He has also served as a visiting lecturer in the Blackfriars M.Litt. Program at Mary Baldwin College (Virginia). While at Rochester, McDonald was the founding director of the UR Theatre in London Program and the English Honors Program.

CASE established the Professors of the Year program in 1981 and the Carnegie Foundation became the co-sponsor a year later. TIAA-CREF, a financial services organization and higher education’s primier retirement system, became the primary sponsor in 2000. Additional support for the program is received from the American Association of Community Colleges and other various higher education associations.

This year there are winners from 43 states. CASE assembled two preliminary panels of judges to select finalists. The Carnegie Foundation then convened the third and final panel, which selected four national and state winners. McDonald was selected from faculty members nominated by colleges and universities throughout the country.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded in 1905 by Andrew Carnegie “to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of teaching.” The foundation conducts research and policy studies on teaching and learning.

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is the largest international association of education institutions, serving more than 3,200 universities, colleges, schools, and related organizations in 46 countries. CASE is the leading resource for professional development, information, and standards in the fields of education fund raising, communications, and alumni relations.

(11-14-03)

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