Some of Ball State's best professors plan to cover education, mentoring topics and the evolution of ideas for specially designed classes they will present because they won Excellence in Teaching awards this year.

The awards recognize faculty members selected by students and colleagues for outstanding teaching. The nominees then submit the dream course descriptions, judged by a panel of students and faculty. The winners receive stipends to develop their dream courses, which are presented later in the academic year.

This year's winners - Christopher Luke, Chin-Sook Pak and Lynn Sousa - expressed enthusiasm about the opportunity to present their dream courses as part of the award, sponsored by the Office of Teaching and Learning Advancement and the Office of the Provost.

Luke, an assistant professor of foreign language education, plans to focus on local high school juniors and seniors who are interested in teaching careers. The course will delve into the duality of being a critical student advocate and a future teacher.

A former high school teacher himself, Luke said the course will give students a real taste of what it is like to be an educator. At the same time, he wants to help the students develop their critical thinking and to express their opinions.

"Even though they are juniors and seniors in high school, they have a voice on important issues," he said. "For example on issues like No Child Left Behind, we've heard feedback from teachers, administrators and politicians, but we haven't heard from the group this affects the most - the students. I want the students to explore and share their opinions about issues that are important to education."

Pak, an associate professor of Spanish, is planning a dream course to be offered as an Honors College colloquium. The seminar-long course will develop mentoring partnerships with Latino high school students and their families to make the college preparation process more accessible to them.

Students in this service-learning seminar will study the educational, social and economic realities of working-class Hispanic immigrant families.

"Students will work weekly with individual Latino students, guide them through the college application process, organize campus visits, explore funding opportunities and form friendships," she said. "The focus will be on the need for transformations for all parties involved - the instructor, the students, the community partners, and the larger community in our diverse world." 

Sousa, a chemistry professor, said his dream course also will be offered through the Honors College and will investigate "how and why we know what we know" and how society's views about topics have changed from antiquity to the present. For example, how ideas about illness, the mind, matter, the elements, heredity and the universe have changed over the centuries.

For instance, about 400 years ago, a few scientists first noticed the coastlines of South America and Africa matched, and 350 years later the theory of plate tectonics arose, he said. Medical research into germ theory, DNA and RNA, for example, has made our view of the spread of illness far different from that  of people living in the Middle Ages.

"Through this course, I want to help the students to understand what we think we know and why we think it," Sousa said. "I want them to question and understand how those ideas have changed over time."