2013 - Dr. Brad Cross

Department of History
BA, MA (Guelph), PhD (Cincinnati)

Dr. Brad Cross is committed to the practice of experiential education. He believes that learning is more exciting when you discover together through hands-on research, analysis, and discussion.

For Cross, his most successful courses are ones in which he draws attention to what the class, including himself, doesn’t know or might not be able to know. He and the students learn as a collective and through many non-traditional teaching techniques.

His students have studied historical artifacts at King’s Landing to learn about the past through material history. He has also organized field trips to New York City where he used the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan as a classroom for students see tangible examples of what they encounter in readings on urban history.

“His outside-the-classroom trips to study history have been as well orchestrated as his classroom sessions and have proven to be some of the greatest learning experiences of my time in university,” said a student who nominated Cross for the award.

Since joining the faculty, Cross has supervised honours research projects, worked with students on research essays published in peer-reviewed journals, and developed new courses for the innovative world History program.