UNL economics professor Rosenbaum earns national teaching award

David Rosenbaum enjoys teaching. He delights in the way students become engaged in their learning, and he marvels at watching them become excited about new ideas.

"To me teaching boils down to a very thoughtful process of how you get students engaged in the learning process, and everything I do is geared toward getting students engaged," the University of Nebraska-Lincoln economist said.

Obviously, Rosenbaum's enthusiasm is infectious and is getting results. And the teacher who's earned numerous teaching awards at the campus level now is getting statewide and national recognition as the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "U.S. Professors of the Year" winner for Nebraska. Announced today by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, Rosenbaum is being honored today in Washington, D.C., with the other state winners at a reception at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Rosenbaum is associate director of academic affairs in the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management, and a professor of economics in the College of Business Administration. He's been a professor at UNL since 1985. He's a winner of the CBA Distinguished Teaching Award, the Outstanding Economics Teacher of the Year from Omicron Delta Upsilon, the recognition certificate for Contributions to Students from the Parents Association and the UNL Teaching Council.

Teaching, he said, is something that he has grown to be passionate about because of the enjoyment he gets in finding new ways to help students learn.

"I don't think I knew I wanted to be a professor," he said, "but yes, something inside me very early on wanted to be a college professor. I've been at UNL for little over 23 years now, and the first 15 I spent doing three things: research, graduate education and undergraduate education, all in economics."

His research interests have been industrial organization, how governments intervene to make them work better, whether self-regulation works in the financial markets now, and the application of markets to legal questions.

The first part of his career he specialized in teaching students in really large sections -- 200 at a time -- where he said it's very easy for students in a class to become lost or completely uninvolved. Much of his effort in those large sections really went in to developing processes to keep students involved in a class that big.

"We did things like pair off, the students were assigned a partner, and I'd lecture for 50 minutes and then give them an exercise to make them think about it right now, so if you don't understand it or if that partnership doesn't understand it, they get the pair next to you to work with," he said.

"Get the students involved, that's where they really learn."

Rosenbaum also has enjoyed his work helping lead the development of the original J.D. Edwards Honors Program, now the Raikes School. He said the program's intent was to meet the needs of businesses who needed employees who understand how to design computer programs and also understand business. They combined this dual goal with leadership and professional development to create a unique program.

"It's about being able to communicate well, being able to work with teams, to lead teams, interact with customers, clients and your own employees; it's about leadership and about project management," he said. "We really wanted to design a curriculum and an honors program that put all of these together, that is the start of what we now call the Raikes School."

Rosenbaum teaches mainly freshmen and the seniors in basic economic principles, basic finance principles, international trade and macroeconomics. His students learn how business works, why customers are buying their products, costs, competing in the market, evaluating how to value projects that have a cash flow over time and how companies interact in a global economic market.

After 23 years, love of teaching continues to be his motivation.

"I guess I just really like teaching," he said. "I'm motivated by the energy that my students exude when they get in the classroom and they're really discovering new things and enjoying themselves. It's exciting.

"You have to be a good explainer, you have to think about the material enough and pare it down to its basics and be able to build it back up in a very methodical understandable way for students and I think you have to put in the commitment and the time to do a good job."

Rosenbaum said he's humbled by the honor and proud to have been nominated by College of Business Administration Dean Cynthia Milligan. But he's eager to share to spotlight.

"This is a really important award for this university," he said. "It says that UNL is not only committed to being a first-rate research institution but it's committed to providing first-rate teaching of undergraduate students as well. And I'm just glad that both the dean, the chancellor and my department chair have been willing to allow me to engage in undergraduate education that has really brought notoriety to the university and I'm just the beneficiary of that."