President's Professors
The President’s Professor Award recognizes tenured faculty who have made outstanding contributions to undergraduate education at Arizona State University. The awardees are chosen based on a variety of criteria: mastery of subject matter; enthusiasm and innovation in the learning and teaching process; ability to engage students both within and outside the classroom; ability to inspire independent and original thinking in students to stimulate students to do creative work; innovation in course and curriculum design; and scholarly contributions.
President's Professors 2007
Jess Alberts
As a teacher, Jess Alberts’ goal is to provoke her students to ask questions about the world around them. As a communications professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, her goal is to help them develop the skills to answer those questions. Alberts’ commitment to her students is evident not only in her frequent teaching of undergraduate courses, in addition to her graduate course load, but through her interactions with her students outside of the classroom. It is not unusual for students to go to her for coaching on job interviews and negotiations, as well as advice on solving conflicts.
“Rarely do senior professors volunteer to teach large lecture sections of the basic course, receive consistently outstanding teacher evaluations from students, and do equally well in doctoral-level seminars,” says Bud Goodall, director of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. “Jess Alberts is that rare professor.”
Ted Humphrey
Recognized for his leadership and innovation in Barrett, The Honors College, Ted Humphrey’s studies concentrate on the philosophers, poets and revolutionaries in Latin America, and nation-building in 19th century Latin America. His published scholarship includes numerous essays on problems of reason and will and space and time in classical modern philosophy, as well as Kant’s epistemology, late metaphysics, and moral and political theory. His translations of Kant’s Enlightenment writings have become standards in the field.
Professor Humphrey chaired ASU’s Philosophy Department from 1974-1983. From 1983 he directed ASU’s Honors Program, guiding it to collegiate status, becoming the founding dean of the Barrett Honors College in1988, a position he held until 2003. Numerous organizations have awarded him their highest honors for teaching excellence, and the Arizona Republic cited him as a force for excellent undergraduate education in Arizona.
Jane Maienschein
Jane Maienschein, a School of Life Sciences Regent’s Professor, focuses on the history and philosophy of biology and its role in society. Maienschein’s commitment to her field is exhibited through her extensive research and experimental analysis with the study of people, institutions, and changing social, political, and legal contexts. Also honored as a Parents’ Professor, she brings an equally broad and challenging transdisciplinary approach to her teaching that is fully appreciated by her students.
“In our Biology and Society group, we are engaged in bringing students into labs and research projects, and also getting faculty and students out into the community, volunteering, and talking about their research. All of that flow of knowledge and creativity and discovery is really important and what makes us who we are as a university,” Maienschein says.