ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan English professor Ralph Williams has been selected as the 2008 Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching Michigan Professor of the Year.

One of U-M’s most popular instructors, Williams pours his heart and soul as well as his mind into his famous, widely attended lectures. His courses and public lectures are typically filled to capacity.

The well-regarded scholar of Shakespeare also helped forge a partnership between U-M, the University Musical Society and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His deep love of the Bard takes center stage as Williams gives public lectures in conjunction with these performances, extending his reach to K-12 and college-age students, and the community.

Williams, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English, is often to be found not only in lecture halls but in unexpected spots, wherever student efforts may be celebrated. A few years ago, the men’s talented and accomplished a cappella group, the Friars, asked Williams, as a “special guest star” to give one of his addresses as an opener for the Spring Concert; he did, with delight.

“While I am never the point of my classroom, I try to use whatever I am and whatever I have learned and experienced so that students can gain access to the objects we study in ways that cut across the divisions of mind and body, emotions and intellect, text and history,” Williams said. “The point is twofold: to relate literature to the life which is its source and to offer to hearers the tools?and the freedom?to relate it as they will to the lives we lead. What students share in a lecture on Shakespeare, for example, is the ‘bounce’ of a script not only off my learning but off my whole lived experience as well.”

A profile in a recent issue of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts magazine describes students listening to one of his courses by saying their faces: “slowly mutate from discomfort, to curiosity, to mesmerization.”

Williams is currently teaching two English courses, Questioning Heroic, Singing Romance; Shakespeare’s Principal Plays; and a third course, Introduction to World Religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. During the winter term, Williams will teach four: Of Human Bonding: Family, Race, Religion and Nation, University; the Bible in

English; Primo Levi and the Memory of the Holocaust; and an Honors Seminar on Memoir and Social Crisis. He will in addition do a series of lectures on Dante in Great Books.

He has been at U-M since 1970 with plans to retire after winter term 2009.

Founded in 1981, the U.S. Professors of the Year is the only national program specifically designed to acknowledge outstanding undergraduate teaching. The U.S. Professors of the Year honor is administered by Carnegie and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

About Carnegie: Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center with a primary mission “to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.” The improvement of teaching and learning is central to all of the work of the foundation.

About CASE: The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is one of the largest international associations of education institutions, serving more than 3,300 universities, colleges, schools and related organizations in 55 countries. CASE is the leading resource for professional development, information and standards in the fields of education fundraising, communications and alumni relations.

Profile on Williams in the current issue of LSA Magazine (.PDF file)More about the awardWilliamsMore on Williams