December 12, 2016

Classics Professor Wins International Recognition for Excellence in Teaching

The Society for Classical Studies has awarded Associate Professor With Term in Humanities Gordon Kelly a 2016 Teaching Excellence Award. Kelly is one of just three recipients to be granted this award honoring professors in the United States and Canada who have set themselves apart in the quality and innovation of their teaching.

The Society for Classical Studies, the primary learned society in North America for the study of Greco-Roman antiquity, has awarded Associate Professor With Term in Humanities Gordon Kelly a 2016 Teaching Excellence Award for the teaching of classics at the college level. Kelly, who is chair of the classics program, is one of just three recipients this year to be granted this extremely competitive award honoring professors in the United States and Canada who have set themselves apart in the quality and innovation of their teaching.

Kelly heads to Toronto in January, where he will be presented with the award at the Plenary Session of SCS’s 148th Annual Meeting.

“I feel incredibly fortunate to be considered in the same league as the outstanding teachers recognized by this award in the past,” Kelly says of his win. “This honor is especially meaningful for me since the initial nomination came from a Lewis & Clark colleague, with students writing letters of support. It’s been a real treat to teach Greek and Roman civilization to students as interested and engaged as those we have at Lewis & Clark.”

Kelly is not the first Lewis & Clark professor to be honored by the SCS. James F. Miller Professor of Humanities and Professor of Philosophy Nicholas Smith earned the Teaching Excellence Award in 1985 while at Virginia Tech, making Lewis & Clark one of the few universities to have multiple winners.

At Lewis & Clark, Kelly’s teaching has spanned Latin and Greek language and literature, Roman and Greek history, classical mythology, Roman law, and Roman women. In 2006, Kelly’s A History of Exile in the Roman Republic was published by Cambridge University Press. The book was deemed “an invaluable resource for researchers” by the New England Classical Journal.
 
Kelly has also been involved with Lewis & Clark’s nationally-recognized Overseas Study Programs. In 2014, he led a student archaeological expedition to Rome, where he and his students worked to unearth an ancient Roman villa, conducting original research as part of a Mellon Foundation Faculty-Student Research Grant.

 

This story was written by Scout Brobst ’20.