National spotlight shines on Augustana history professor

Dr. Lendol Calder, Augustana College professor of history, is no stranger to awards and honors, being named Illinois Professor of the Year in 2010. And now he's a finalist for the top teaching prize in the nation.

The Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching is given biennially by Baylor University. As one of three finalists for the 2026 award, Dr. Calder already has won $15,000, plus a $10,000 award for his department.

Each finalist will present a series of lectures at Baylor this fall and a Cherry Award lecture on their home campus. The award-winner, to be announced next spring, will receive $250,000 and an additional $25,000 for their department and will teach a semester-in-residence at Baylor University during fall 2026 or spring 2027.

The Cherry Award program was established to celebrate and inspire great teaching and give Baylor University students the opportunity to learn from the nation's most preeminent scholar/teachers.

"It's fair to think of it as something like a Nobel Prize for teaching," Dr. Calder said. "And that’s how I felt the afternoon I got the phone call from the award committee. Gob-smacked is what I felt. It still doesn't feel real."

The students and colleagues who nominated him will not be surprised that the Cherry Award committee agreed with their opinion of his excellence as a teacher.

His teaching revolution may have begun in 2004, when he published an article on history teaching called "Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey."

In the paper, which has been cited hundreds of times, he describes moving away from the traditional manner of teaching, defined as a sequence of lecture-textbook-test that "covers" a time period.

Instead, he proposed ways of being taught that ask students "to do, think and value what practitioners in the field are doing, thinking and valuing." In other words, to make students not merely recipients of facts, but researchers of them.

Sarah-Eva Carlson ’03 Marchese gives us a glimpse.

"When it came to my history honors project, I did not know what I wanted to do and I felt lost. Lendol asked me to meet him in the library. He pushed a folder across the table to me. In it, there was an old photograph of a house. On the back, someone had handwritten 'Indian Graves.'

"I think this is your paper. Finding out what happened here, he said."

All the known records had been destroyed by fire, so Marchese had to knock on doors, call small libraries, and go to a Native American reservation for help translating some letters. The successful project was published in a peer-reviewed journal by the 22-year-old undergraduate.

"This project fueled a personal understanding that is the singular bedrock of great teaching," Marchese wrote in her award nomination letter. "I left it knowing something more about who I was. I also learned a skill that I have carried forward in my professional life: how to tell a story."

Dr. Calder came to Augustana in 1996, with an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. He earned his undergraduate degree, in psychology, at the University of Texas at Austin, and you may still find him wearing a cowboy hat outside the classroom.

In 1999, his book, "Financing the American Dream," was praised as "transformative" by The New York Times. But rather than pursuing a position at a large research university, he stayed in the liberal arts environment at Augustana and focused on the study of student learning.

Then in 2014, his piece, "The Stories We Tell," won the Gilbert Award from the American Historical Association for the "Best Article on the Teaching of History."

And in 2021, Dr. Calder took a hard look at the traditional student essay. He and Robert Williams ’19 published "Must History Students Write History Essays?"

"He did something few historians dared to do: he put his deeply held beliefs to the test," said Dr. Sam Wineburg of Stanford University. "Using short, document-based assessments, he found there was little difference in the historical thinking skills of students after taking his traditional essay class and students in a non-essay class."

Dr. Calder's history colleague, Dr. Jane Simonsen, led the Cherry Award nomination effort.

"His hallmark as an educator is his focus on learning rather than teaching," she said. "At his lectures and workshops, he tells attendees that 'Professors go to class thinking 'What will I say today?' Teachers go to class thinking 'What will my students do today?'

"The letters of support from former students show the effects these methods have had on them, regardless of their vocation."

Two samples:

– Robert Williams ’19: "Instead of making history a dull task of rote memorization, Lendol found ways to challenge students and make us better thinkers and citizens of the world. He created a teaching style to help students 'uncover' the past."

– Cameron Onumah ’14: "Dr. Calder is not your typical college professor. His ability to encourage students to critically engage with history and to challenge conventional perspectives has shaped not only my academic journey but also my professional life."

Dr. Calder's joy in teaching obviously comes through to his students.

"I can't say it's the actual teaching, which is hard, messy, elusive work," he said. "I get nervous jitters before teaching a class, still.

"What I enjoy seeing is what people do with the knowledge they gain in my courses. A woman from San Francisco writes: 'You won’t remember me; I took only one of your courses. But in that course, you taught me that problem-solving begins with asking good questions. Today I'm a bank vice president. And I am the person everyone looks to in meetings to be the person in the room who knows what questions to ask.'"

Last spring, a high school history teacher at the Whitfield School in suburban St. Louis invited Dr. Calder to an end-of-school celebration of learning. Teachers had designed a new curriculum inspired by his article "The Stories We Tell," and they wanted him to see the results.

"It was incredible!" he said. "As the student teams led me through the museum exhibits built to showcase their work, I felt admiration, excitement and gratitude to see how my work in curricular design is being put to good use by others."

Graduate students dream of someday making an impact on the world with their scholarship, without really believing it will ever happen.

"But I've been very fortunate to see my work 'travel' widely in my profession and beyond," he said. "Every week I get emails from professors and teachers who have questions about the Calder method."

And next year, the professor behind the Calder method could bring home the only national award – with the single largest monetary reward – presented by a college or university for excellence in teaching.