The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) has announced the third class of Carnegie Scholars, 40 outstanding faculty from diverse fields who will work together to invent and share new conceptual models for teaching.

"The Pew National Fellowship Program for Carnegie Scholars supports the work of distinguished faculty who are contributing to an emerging scholarship of teaching and learning," explained Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Such work is essential, Shulman explained, because teaching tends to be a private act, limited to the teacher and students; it is rarely evaluated by professional peers. "The result is that those who engage in innovative acts of teaching rarely build upon the work of others. We work to render teaching public, subject to critical evaluation and usable by others in both the scholarly and the general community," he said.

Pat Hutchings, who directs the higher education program of CASTL with Shulman, noted, "Our purpose is to support work that will foster significant, long-lasting learning for all students, enhance the practice and profession of teaching, and bring to teaching the recognition and reward afforded to other forms of scholarship."

The Carnegie Scholars program is open to faculty from all sectors of higher education. This year's program invited applications from selected fields, including history.

The 2000–01 Carnegie Scholars in history and their academic institutions are:

Robert Bain, History Education, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Vernon Burton, History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; James A. Quirin, History, Fisk University; and Gerald Shenk, Interdisciplinary Studies/History, California State University at Monterey Bay.

Carnegie Scholars serve a one-year term during which they investigate and document work on issues in the teaching and learning of their field. While the scholars work primarily in their own academic settings, they spend two 10-day summer sessions together at the foundation and additional time during the academic year. They will also work with scholars from the 1999 and 1998 groups.

The Carnegie Scholars Program is one component of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, which involves teachers in elementary and secondary schools as well as faculty members from higher education. The higher education component includes the Pew National Fellowship Program for Carnegie Scholars, the Carnegie Teaching Academy Campus Program (coordinated by the American Association for Higher Education), and collaborations with scholarly and professional societies. The $6 million, five-year effort is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Carnegie Foundation.