For Immediate Release — Friday, October 28, 2005
Contact:
Mary E. McCrank
Media Relations Officer
(585) 245-5516
SUNY Geneseo Professor William Cook, a Finalist for
Prestigious Teaching Award, will Deliver Cherry Lecture Nov. 10
GENESEO, N.Y. — William R. Cook, a Distinguished
Teaching Professor of History at the State University of New York at Geneseo
and one of three finalists for Baylor University's 2006 Robert Foster Cherry
Award for Great Teaching, will deliver a lecture Thursday, Nov. 10, at SUNY
Geneseo.
Cook delivered the same lecture
Oct. 13 at Baylor, in Waco, Texas. A condition of the competition is that he
delivers the lecture at his home campus. The lecture, "The Head of St.
Catherine of Siena," also will double as the history department's Annual
Undergraduate Lecture. The speech begins at 12:45 p.m. in the MacVittie College
Union Ballroom. A reception will immediately follow in the Hunt Room in the
MacVittie College Union.
Cook will discuss both the relic
of St. Catherine's head, and her thoughts, as expressed through her teaching
and writing. Through this prism, he will suggest the difficulty of "getting
inside the head" of someone as distant from us in thought and world-view as St.
Catherine, who died in 1380. Then, he will argue that such intellectual
struggle gives us a way to deal with the "differentness" we experience today in
our global village. Ultimately, the lecture will be about the value of studying
history, even—and especially—pre-modern history, according to Cook.
Baylor University presents the
Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching every other year. The
award honors outstanding professors in the English-speaking world who are
distinguished for their ability to communicate as classroom teachers. Nominees
must have proven track records as extraordinary teachers with positive,
inspiring and long-lasting effects on students, along with records of
distinguished scholarship.
The other finalists are Anton E. Armstrong, Tosdal Professor
of Music at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., and Robert W. Brown,
Institute Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Each finalist received $15,000, and their home department also received $10,000
to foster the development of teaching skills. The award winner, who will be
announced in the spring of 2006, will receive $200,000 and $25,000 for the
professor's home department. In addition, the winner will teach in residence
during the fall 2006 or spring 2007 semester at Baylor.
A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Cook earned his bachelor's
degree from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., and his master's degree and
doctorate from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Concentrating on medieval
history, he studied with well-known medievalist Brian Tierney and spent a year
conducting his dissertation research in Oxford, Vienna and several cities in the
former Czechoslovakia. In 1970, he joined Geneseo as an assistant professor of
history. In 1984, at the age of 40, he was named a Distinguished Teaching
Professor.
Throughout his career, Cook has focused much of his research
on St. Francis of Assisi. He has published a short biography and a book about
Italian paintings of St. Francis that are housed in the U.S., as well as a
catalogue of all the paintings of Francis. He has published articles about
medieval monasticism, Dante, "The Song
of Roland," and the teaching of history and humanities. He is co-author with
Geneseo Distinguished Teaching Professor of English Ron Herzman of "The
Medieval World View," published by Oxford University Press. He also appeared on
a Learning Channel documentary on Dante and a Hallmark documentary on St.
Francis. Currently, he is working on two articles in the field of American
history.
Recognized from the beginning of his career as a good
teacher, he received the inaugural SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in
Teaching in 1974. In 1992, the Council for the Advancement and Support of
Education named Cook New York state's Professor of the Year. In 2003, Cook and
Herzman received the first annual CARA Award for excellence in the teaching of
medieval studies from the Medieval Academy of America.
Cook has made an impact on the community in other ways, too.
In 1998, he made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Congress. The morning after
Election Day, he sent his substitute home and returned to the classroom, where
he belongs. He also is a columnist for the Livingston County News and a member of the board of contributors of the
Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle.
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