Cherry Award Summit on Great Teaching
Every two years, the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching selects a recipient and that honoree teaches in residence at Baylor University. During that semester at Baylor, the Cherry Award for Great Teaching and the Academy for Teaching and Learning collaborate to present the Cherry Award Summit on Great Teaching.
The ATL welcomes Cherry Award recipient Dr. Jay Banner for Spring 2025. This year's Summit will take the form of a series of invited talks by notable and inspiring dignitaries in the field of higher education.

Dr. Edward Burger
February 6, 2025 | 4:00-5:00pm
Morrison 100
Transforming individuals and systems through the power of effective thinking: Teaching to uplift lives today and tomorrow
One of the quintessential elements of formal education is that it offers students lessons that can stay with them long after they have forgotten the mechanics they often mimic in our classrooms. The goal of education is to transform lives — to help individuals learn how to grow: to think more wisely and create more imaginatively today so that they can go off and artfully innovate as well as solve the important problems of tomorrow. As we will discuss together, these practices of thought can be taught explicitly throughout the curriculum in every discipline and applied throughout life.
To see an illustration of how these practices can be incorporated within the content matter of a subject, you are invited to a lively colloquium by our speaker.
About Edward Burger
Dr. Edward Burger is President and CEO of the St. David's Foundation, and President Emeritus of Southwestern University as well as Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and a leader on thinking, innovation, and creativity. Previously he was the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Mathematics at Williams College. Burger has delivered over 700 addresses worldwide at venues including Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins as well as at the Smithsonian Institution, Microsoft Corporation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the New York Public Library, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of over 70 research articles, books, and video series (starring in over 8,000 on-line videos), including the book The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking, published by Princeton University Press and translated into over a dozen languages worldwide. His latest book, Making Up Your Mind: Thinking Effectively Through Creative Puzzle-Solving, also published by Princeton University Press, was on several of Amazon's Hot New Releases lists.
In 2006, Reader’s Digest listed Burger in their annual “100 Best of America” as America’s Best Math Teacher. In 2010 he was named the winner of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. The Huffington Post named him one of their "Game Changers" and Microsoft Worldwide Education selected him as one of their “Global Heroes in Education.” In 2013, Burger was inducted as an inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. His program, Higher ED, produced by NPR's Austin affiliate KUT is available at kut.org/topic/higher-ed/ and on iTunes.

Paul Normandin
March 6, 2025 | 4:00-5:00pm
Jones Library 200 (Dennis Campbell Innovative Learning Space)
True Personal Stories: Building Connections in the Classroom
About Paul Normandin
Dean Emeritus, The Merlin Works Institute for Improvisation
Paul Normandin is an award-winning storyteller, a producer, writer, and founder of the Improv troupe In Our Prime. Paul is a Moth GrandSlam Champion and winner of the first Texas State StorySlam. He has a BA and MA from Texas A&M University in Speech Communication and retired as a Senior Planning and Project Advisor for the State of Texas. When not on stage telling stories, performing Improv, or writing sketches, he can be found playing Ultimate or in Rehab from Ultimate.

Dr. Robert A. Duke
April 10, 2025 | 4:00-5:00pm
Morrison 100
Why students don’t learn what we think we teach
About Robert Duke
Bob Duke is the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor and Head of Music and Human Learning at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is a University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas System Distinguished Teaching Professor, Elizabeth Shatto Massey Distinguished Fellow in Teacher Education, and Director of the Center for Music Learning. He is also a clinical professor in the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas and was the founding director of the psychology of learning program at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.
Duke’s research on human learning and behavior spans multiple disciplines, and his most recent work explores the refinement of procedural memories and the analysis of attention allocation in music practice and in teacher-learner interactions. A former studio musician and public school music teacher, he has worked closely with children at-risk, both in the public schools and through the juvenile justice system. He is the author of Scribe 5 behavior analysis software, and his most recent books are Intelligent Music Teaching: Essays on the Core Principles of Effective Instruction, The Habits of Musicianship, which he co-authored with Jim Byo of Louisiana State University, and Brain Briefs, which he co-authored with Art Markman, his co-host on the public radio program and podcast Two Guys on Your Head, produced by KUT Radio in Austin.