2010 CPSA Prize for Teaching Excellence

Winner: J. Marshall Beier, McMaster University

Excerpt from jury report: J. Marshall Beier is clearly an exceptional teacher of global politics. His courses are intellectually ambitious and cohesive, as well as clear about learning goals and evaluation criteria. He creates excitement in his classrooms, and his approach is striking in the extent to which it not only respects students but treats them as full intellectual agents. In his Innovation in Arms Control Project, a final year seminar, he supports students in collaboratively producing their own scholarship, which is published in a Working Paper series he has created; these research products feed into a third year class, and simulations in the third year class in turn inform research in the fourth year seminar. His students’ letters reflect not only their appreciation for his teaching, but the extent to which his courses, his mentoring, and his example shaped the development of their goals and careers.