UNC Asheville Professor Ed Katz Receives National Education Award

Edward J. Katz, UNC Asheville Associate Vice Chancellor for University Programs and associate professor of literature and language, recently received the 2005 Jerry G. Gaff Faculty Award. This national award is presented annually by the Association for General and Liberal Studies recognizing outstanding leadership in the field.

Katz led UNC Asheville’s efforts to redesign the general education program known as Integrative Liberal Studies. Developed over four years by the faculty, the Integrative Liberal Studies Program offers students a new approach to the standard introductory requirements. Instead of selecting from a menu of courses to be taken in the first two years, students begin with the Freshman Colloquium and build their knowledge through focused courses that integrate different subjects over four years of study. Students take courses clustered around issues – health and illness, globalization and science, and technology and culture, for example – in order to understand how expertise from several subject areas assists in understanding complex, real-world problems.

“It is an honor to have received this award from the association,” said Katz. “Even more, it is an honor to teach and work at UNC Asheville, with colleagues so deeply committed to student learning and our University’s liberal arts mission.”

Katz joined the UNC Asheville faculty in 1992 and was named Distinguished Teacher for Untenured Faculty in 1995, Distinguished Teacher in the Humanities in 2000, and Distinguished Teacher in 2004, the University’s highest faculty award. He has published articles and presented papers on the 18th-century poet Christopher Smart and the literary theorist Kenneth Burke. A member of the National Board of Directors of the Council for the Administration of General Liberal Studies, he also has written widely on the general education revision process and integrative approaches to the liberal arts.

Katz holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of Washington and Michigan State University, and a master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Rochester.

Media Contact:

• Jill Yarnall, UNC Asheville Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526