Marhoefer receives Meredith Teaching Award

Assistant Professor of History Laurie Marhoefer has won a Meredith Teaching Recognition Award for 2015-16.  The award, which is given by Syracuse University, honors excellence in teaching by non-tenured faculty and adjunct and part-time instructors.  

Recipients are selected for teaching innovation, effectiveness in communicating with students and the lasting value of courses. To be eligible, candidates must have completed two years of service to the University and not yet received tenure. Each recipient is given $3,000 to further his or her professional development.

“What I want above all from my students,” said Marhoefer in an article in SU News, “[is] not just that they think for themselves, but that they think well for themselves.”  She wants them to use analysis and evidence to back up their arguments and to express their ideas effectively. Marhoefer’s specialty is Weimar Germany and the history of sexuality, but perhaps her most popular course is “Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.” When she first started teaching the class, it typically enrolled 40-50 students, but now has 150. “I worked for many years to develop the skill of being able to lecture well to a large class,” she says.  She takes an equal amount of pride in teaching smaller classes and seminars well and observes the classes of colleagues who are known as good teachers in order to pick up new techniques. 04/28/15