Dr. Brian Roberts Recognized with Teaching Award
Dr. Brian Roberts (C’88) is this year’s recipient of the Horace Edwin Harper Jr. and Evelyn Wright Harper Award for Teaching Excellence, which was established to recognize and help publicize excellent teaching at the College. A popular professor, known for his project-centered learning initiatives, Roberts teaches political science with a focus on American government and politics.
During election years, Roberts’s students conduct exit polls in nearby communities and provide live radio coverage of election results. In January 2016, he led the field program “Race for the White House: A Front Row Seat to Presidential Politics” in Iowa and New Hampshire, where students studied presidential caucuses and primaries—and enjoyed extraordinary interaction with candidates from across the political spectrum. During the two-week program, students were literally a few feet away from and asking questions of most of the candidates on the campaign trail.
Adult learners value Roberts’s instruction as well, benefitting from his Summer Session classes. This summer he’ll teach two courses—Election 2016: How Did We Get Here? and The Future of the European Union: Life after the Brexit Vote.
Soon after Summer Session, Roberts will head to the East Coast to participate in the selective American history seminar The 20th-Century Presidency, held at Stanford University’s Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center in Washington, DC. The multidisciplinary seminar, led by Bancroft Prize-winning author and historian Dr. Robert Dallek, is for faculty members in history, political science, and related fields and will explore characteristics of 20th-century presidential leadership, including several individual presidents and their presidencies.