Willett Receives the Morningstar Family Teaching Award

Eliot Professor John Willett will receive the Morningstar Family Teaching Award today, Wednesday, June 7, at the HGSE precommencement ceremony. The Morningstar Family Teaching Award recognizes a faculty member for his or her generosity in providing time and support to students.

"I am honored to join the group of people who've received this award. [They] are terrific teachers and community members, and I'm honored to be placed with them," Willett said. "Teaching is important and matters a lot to me personally. As a school of education, I think it's the responsibility [of HGSE's faculty] to be the best teachers in the university, and I think we are."

The award includes a $5,000 prize and recognition on a plaque in the Gutman Library lobby. Willett was nominated along with 42 other faculty members, with 148 students making nominations.

"As a teacher, John is the complete package. Students uniformly praise him for the thought and preparation that he puts into each and every class," said Dean and Lesser Professor Kathleen McCartney. "He demonstrates daily through his words and his deeds that he cares deeply about our students and their learning."

The Morningstar Award recipient was chosen using a three stage process. During the first two weeks of May 2006, HGSE master's and doctoral students submitted nominations for faculty members via an online poll. After reviewing all nominated faculty members, a student advisory committee for master's and doctoral students provided additional feedback on the nominees. Based on student testimonials and input from the student advisory committees, representatives from the Dean's Office then selected the honoree.

Willett, a native of northern England, was educated at Oxford University, where he studied physics (specializing in quantum mechanics) in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he and his wife and daughter lived in Hong Kong, where he taught high school physics and mathematics for almost a decade. During this time, he traveled widely before settling in the United States in 1980.

Willett is interested in all things quantitative, particularly statistical methods for analyzing the timing and occurrence of events; methods for modeling change, learning, and development; and longitudinal research design. A new book by Willett and Conant Professor Judith Singer, Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence, is an integrated presentation of statistical methods for the analysis of longitudinal data.

Past recipients of the Morningstar Award include Lecturer Terry Tivnan (2000), Senior Lecturer Kay Merseth (2001), Aronson Associate Professor Wendy Luttrell (2002), Associate Professor Bridget Terry Long (2003), Shattuck Professor Catherine Snow (2004), and former professor Eleanor Drago-Severson (2005).