Leading a semester-long overseas program for 22 Lewis & Clark undergraduates in Tanzania
At Lewis & Clark College Elizabeth Bennett teaches International Political Economy, Social Justice in the Global Economy, International Affairs Senior Thesis, and Intro to International Affairs. You can view her Baccalaureate Ceremony keynote “Resilience: Learning from the Past Four Years” here.
Dr. Bennett has won several awards for teaching. In 2018, she was named “Teacher of the Year” (article and video here) by the Lewis & Clark student honor society, in consultation with the student body. The award recognizes a faculty member who, among the 140 faculty, goes “particularly above and beyond the requirements of their position to enrich student learning both inside and outside of the classroom” and “demonstrates passion for his or her field of study, preparedness and grace in the classroom, adaptability to new ideas and learning styles, and wisdom and compassion as a mentor.” She was one of five nominees for the award again in 2021. As a graduate student, Bennett also received the P. Terrence Hopmann Excellence in Teaching Award at Brown in 2011. The award recognizes two teaching assistants each year for outstanding service in the classroom, based on anonymous student evaluations and faculty recommendation.
Each year Professor Bennett trains, mentors, and supervises undergraduate research assistants who develop valuable research, writing, and professional skills while making critical contributions to research. Her assistants include: Maggie Sholar (2014), McLane Harrington (2015), Sophie Owens (2015-16), Adrian Austin-King (2016), Jessie Simpson (2016), Maya Anthony-Crosby (2016), Jacob Weiss (2016), Ben Beecroft (2016-17), Ellen Schwartz (2016-18), Chloe Safar (2018), Nicole Godbout (2018-19), Maggie Coit (2019), Adaira Grohs (2019), Cole Harris (2019), Marshall Piotrowski (2019), Frank Schneegas (2020), Jesse Lawrence-Weilmann (2021), Sawyer Mauk (2022-5), Teresa Lourenco Serra (2024), Liv Ladaire (2025), Bri Deleon (2025-26), and Abby Burke (2026).
Dr. Bennett describes her teaching style as personal, experiential, and rigorous: “My students need to know why they are in my class—how their work over the course of a semester satisfies an intellectual necessity. I help students to cultivate this sense of purpose, and honor it by employing assessment tools that reflect their personal and professional goals. My classes are experiential, in that students are always doing, creating, engaging the course material. I employ simulations, facilitate collaborative projects, connect intellectual work to field experiences, and otherwise require that students move beyond simple digestion and regurgitation of information. I demand critical thinking, intellectual investment, and thoughtful creativity, and provide ample feedback about progress in these areas. I take to heart Benjamin Franklin’s experience as a student, ‘Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.'”
Professor Bennett has extensive experience teaching and mentoring. Since earning a BA in Secondary Education in 2002, she has taught in a wide variety of settings, including the Institute for Collaborative Education (a public high school in New York City); the Center for Intercultural Dialogue on Development (an experiential learning retreat center in Mexico); the Global Scholars Program at Yale University; Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University; the Center for Global Affairs at New York University; and the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University.
Dr. Bennett is available on a limited basis for keynotes, lectures, and workshops. Her full CV is here.
Her yellow labrador retriever, Rhubarb, also loves to support students. Read about her here and here.