Congratulations to Dr. Martin Cohen! He is the recipient of the General Education Distinguished Teacher Award for 2024. Dr. Cohen is a Political Scientist who received his Ph.D. from UCLA and has taught POSC 225 for the General Education Program at JMU since 2007.
Dr. Cohen teaches in the American and Global Perspectives area of the General Education Program. POSC 225 examines institutions, processes and intellectual concepts which structure American political activity, and provides an introduction to quantitative methodology. There are six learning outcomes in the American Experience area and the committee was especially impressed by how well Dr. Cohen’s teaching and materials connect with each of these objectives. Furthermore, committee members commented that, “Although the committee was deeply impressed by every one of the nominees’ classes we observed, this one stood out most clearly as the embodiment of the General Education Program’s mission to cultivate “habits of the mind and heart that are essential to informed citizens in a democracy and world community,” as well as JMU’s mission to prepare “educated and enlightened citizens” and clearly fulfilling three facets of the Vision: engaged learning, civic engagement, and community engagement.”
The committee members who observed Dr. Cohen’s class were also impressed by the interactive nature of his lectures, the effective use of evidence-based pedagogy, and the thoughtful way in which he introduced and discussed emotionally charged and controversial topics.
Dr. Cohen will receive a $1500 honorarium and a plaque and will be honored at a special event in this spring. He will also be the keynote speaker at the General Education Student Conference banquet in the fall of 2024.
He is the twentieth recipient of this award, which was established by the Provost’s Office in 2004. Previous Distinguished Teacher Award recipients are: Craig Abrahamson (2004); Carol A. Hurney (2005); Lynn S. Fichter (2006); Jeffrey T. Andre (2007); Michael A. Moghtader (2008); Kit Murphy (2009); John Ott (2010); Carole Nash (2011); Amanda Biesecker (2012); Kristin St. John (2013); David Daniel (2014); Deb Warnaar (2015); Kathleen Ferriaolo (2016); Geary Albright (2017); Claire Lyons (2018), Kimberly DuVall (2019), Michael Trocchia (2020), Graceful Pivots (2021), Chris Bachmann (2022), and Masoud Kaveh-Baghbadorani (2023).
