Michael Salemi, UNC professor emeritus of economics, has been named a finalist for a national teaching award.
Salemi is one of three finalists for the 2014 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, a national award sponsored by Baylor University.
The other finalists are Meera Chandrasekhar, a physics professor at the University of Missouri, and Joan Breton Connelly, a professor of classics and art history at New York University.
Each finalist receives $15,000, as well as $10,000 for their home departments to foster the development of teaching skills. They will present a series of lectures at Baylor in fall 2013, and a Cherry Award lecture at their respective home universities.
The winner will be announced in spring 2014 and will receive $250,000 and an additional $25,000 for his/her home department.
Salemi joined the UNC faculty in 1976.
He has received a number of teaching awards, including the 2012 Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Award from the Southern Economic Association, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship for teaching excellence in undergraduate instruction from UNC from 1987-1990 and again from 2005-2010, the 2007 Great Teacher in Economics Award from the Gus Stavros Center at Florida State University, the 1998 Marvin Bower Medal from the National Council on Economic Education for significant contributions to American students’ understanding of economics, and the 2001 Villard Research Award from the Association of Economic Educators.
Involved with teacher education since 1974, Salemi has chaired the Committee on Economic Education of the American Economic Association (AEA) and was co-principal investigator for an AEA-National Science Foundation project to promote interactive teaching strategies in college-level economics courses. He was elected to the Society of Economics Educators and served as president in 2004.
Salemi is the author of more than 40 published articles on macroeconomics, domestic and international monetary theory and economic education. His recent projects deal with optimal monetary policy, strategies for reforming the college-level principles of economics course and using discussion of classic and current articles to teach undergraduate economics.
Read more about the Cherry Award for teaching.
