Baylor Honors Princeton Professor with Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching

Baylor University has named Jamie Rankin, Ph.D., University Lecturer in German at Princeton University and inaugural director of the Princeton Center for Language Study, as the 2026 recipient of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. The Cherry Award honor was announced during the Spring Baylor Faculty Meeting hosted by Provost Nancy Brickhouse, Ph.D.

Baylor’s Robert Foster Cherry Award is a prestigious national teaching award designed to honor great teachers, stimulate discussion in the academy about the value of teaching and encourage departments and institutions to recognize their own great teachers. Along with a record of distinguished scholarship, individuals nominated for the Cherry Award have proven themselves to be extraordinary teachers with positive, inspiring and long-lasting effects on students.

For Rankin, a great teacher needs skill, patience and empathy. “It’s always seemed to me that the most effective teachers – and that includes coaches, choir directors, mentors of any kind – are people who can put themselves imaginatively in the position of someone who doesn’t yet have the knowledge or skills in whatever is being taught,” he said.