Professor Receives San José State University's Top Award For Teaching

Anne T. Lawrence, professor of organization and management in the College of Business at San José State University, has received the Outstanding Professor Award for 2004/05, announced interim President Don W. Kassing. This award is one of the four top academic awards given by the university each year.

"Professor Lawrence is an outstanding and innovative teacher, a prolific and insightful scholar, a gifted author, and an active participant in university and community service," said Kassing. "Her research in corporate social and environmental responsibility is now more relevant to our students than ever."

A faculty member since 1988, Lawrence has participated in campus-wide teaching innovations and was one of the founding faculty members of the MUSE Program (Metropolitan University Scholar's Experience). She also participated in a four-department interdisciplinary team that taught a service-learning course on globalization and daily life. As an advisor in her department for many years, Lawrence has counseled hundreds of students, recommending many of them to graduate programs in business and other fields. She serves her students on thesis committees and has supervised a number of independent student projects.

One student has said, "Professor Lawrence is not only a motivational professor, but she also effectively teaches her students the appropriate way to act ethically as future business managers. Her teaching abilities and techniques draw students in and pique their interest in all aspects of study."

Another student remarked, "Outside of the classroom, Professor Lawrence takes time out of her day to extend a helping hand to her students. She goes above-and-beyond to help ensure success in our lives -- inside and outside the classroom."

"Lawrence is truly a student's teacher and a teacher's teacher," says a colleague, Professor Marlene Turner. "She is a master teacher who clearly identifies her learning objectives and carefully crafts her course materials and classroom experiences to meet those objectives.

"Lawrence's educational endeavors are not limited to her students," continued Turner. "She has been an active mentor for junior faculty, taking much time and exerting enormous effort to help them become better teachers."

Beyond SJSU, Lawrence is recognized in her field both nationally and internationally as an outstanding case author and editor of case journals. Her teaching cases have been published in Case Research Journal, the premier peer-reviewed case journal, and in numerous textbooks. Lawrence has received several awards for her cases, including the Tate Award, the top award given by the North American Case Research Association, and the Emerson Center Award for the outstanding case in business ethics.

Lawrence is lead author of the recent edition of a leading textbook in the field, Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy (McGraw-Hill), which is widely used in the United States and Canada.

She was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Media Contact: Nancy L. Stake at 408-924-1166