10/4/05 Contact: Roy Summerford, 334/844-9999 (summero@auburn.edu)
David Granger, 334/844-999 (grangdm@auburn.edu)

TWO PROFESSORS RECEIVE FIRST LEISCHUCK AWARDS AS BEST AU TEACHERS

AUBURN – Veteran Auburn University professors William Buskist of the College of Liberal Arts and Leanne Lamke of the College of Human Sciences are the first winners of a new annual award recognizing AU’s best teachers.

Interim President Ed Richardson presented the first Gerald and Emily Leischuck Endowed Presidential Awards for Excellence to Lamke and Buskist in a recent ceremony at the President’s House after they were identified as Auburn’s top teachers for 2005 by a faculty committee and Provost John Heilman.

Heilman said the awards and their first recipients bring increased recognition to teaching at Auburn. “The annual awards that Emily and Gerald Leischuck have established to honor excellence in teaching represent a visionary commitment to the instructional cornerstone of Auburn University’s academic mission,” he said.

“Auburn deeply appreciates both the Leischucks and the first recipients of their award, Leanne Lamke and Bill Buskist, who through their innovative methods have set a standard to which all of us who are devoted to teaching at Auburn can rightfully aspire,” he added.

Buskist is Alumni Professor and Distinguished Professor in the Psychology Department, where he has been a faculty member since 1982. Early in his Auburn career, Buskist expanded his studies of competition and cooperation into educational psychology with studies in the qualities and behaviors of “master teachers,” adopting some of the best practices for his own teaching. He has also conducted studies in the assessment of teaching effectiveness.

Buskist won the American Psychological Association’s Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award in 1999 and was among the first faculty members inducted when the College of Liberal Arts established its Academy of Teaching and Outstanding Teachers in 2003.

Liberal Arts Dean Anne-Katrin Gramberg said Buskist is a role model for other faculty in the college. “Bill Buskist, the teachers’ teacher, has combined his natural gift as a classroom instructor with the discipline of an empirical approach towards understanding the art of teaching and learning,” Gramberg said.

“Under his leadership and by his example, he has brought the Psychology Department and the College of Liberal Arts national prominence as one of the very best at developing neophyte instructors into master teachers,” she added.

Lamke, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, has been a faculty member in Human Sciences since 1985.

She received the Student Government Association’s Outstanding Faculty Award in the College of Human Sciences in 1993 and the Auburn Alumni Association’s Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award in 1997, when she also was named a Camp War Eagle Faculty Honoree.

In 1996, Lamke received the Distinguished Teaching Award of the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships, and the National Council on Family Relations has chosen her to receive its Ernest Osborne Teaching Award for 2005.

Human Sciences Dean June Henton said Lamke has had a profound impact on the college’s students and her faculty colleagues.

“At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, she is known for the outstanding job she does of presenting state-of-the-art course content, communicating complex ideas to students, and never losing sight of individual differences in abilities,” Henton said. “Dr. Lamke is passionate about the importance of teaching, not only as the central mission of the university today, but also as it relates to training the next generation of teaching scholars.”

Auburn University is a preeminent land-grant and comprehensive research institution with more than 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff. Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

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