Professor Harry Heft, a member of Denison University's department of psychology since 1976, was honored at the recent (April 19) Academic Awards Convocation as the 2002 winner of the Brickman Teaching Excellence Award.

In presenting the Brickman Teaching Excellence Award to Heft, Provost David Anderson said it recognizes a member of the Denison faculty who "exemplifies all that is embodied in the concept of a 'master' teacher:

The Charles A. Brickman Excellence in Teaching Award was established in 1997 in honor of retiring Board of Trustee Chair Charles A. Brickman. The recipient is chosen by a faculty committee of previous winners of the award along with the provost and associate provost. The nominees must be a tenured member of the Denison teaching faculty who is a model of commitment to teaching and who also has a strong record of dedication to students inside and outside the classroom.

Author ofEcological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism, Heft has published numerous journal articles as well as chapters in eight other books concerning environmental perception and the relationship between the early environment and child development.

Heft earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Maryland, his master's at the University of Bridgeport and his doctorate at Pennsylvania State University from the interdisciplinary program in man-environment relations. Heft has been a visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Child Development, the University of Washington's Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, and in the psychology departments of the University of Washington and Cornell University. In addition to serving as chair of the psychology department for three years, Heft also served as director of Denison's environmental studies program in 1990-91.

Heft was elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association in 1994 and is a board member of the International Society for Ecological Psychology.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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