Alumnus Douglas Baker (Dept. of Education, Ph,D. '01) from UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School was given the 2014 Charles Carpenter Fries Award in recognition of his dedication and distinguished career towards the advancement in the teaching of English from Michigan Council of Teachers of English (MCTE) at their annual conference in Lansing, Michigan.
Dr. Doug Baker was also recently elected as Associate Chair for National Council of Teachers of English’s Assembly for Research, and will chair the 2016 conference. Among his accomplishments, Baker and the Department of Education’s Prof. Judith Green are currently editing a special edition of the Pedagogies: An International Journal from the Singapore Institute of Education that will be published in January.
Dr. Baker decided to attend UCSB Gevirtz Graduate School of Education after eleven years of teaching high school English in central California. During his time at Gevirtz, he focused primarily on the education of how to prepare teachers for the classroom. He also focused on research in both a Studio Art Class and in an English Class. Shortly after earning his Ph.D., he began his career teaching English at Eastern Michigan University in 2001. Baker is currently a professor in the Department of English and the Program of English Education.
Currently, Dr. Baker is chair of the Language and Social Processes SIG of the American Educational Research Association; the coordinator for the English Education program; co-director of the Eastern Michigan Writing Project; the coordinator of an annual conference for new teachers; and chair of the College of Arts and Sciences Assessment Committee.
His different areas of interest and expertise include classroom discourse and the role it plays in how students learn disciplinary knowledge; the role of reflexivity in teaching; assessment of student learning; and ethnographic approaches to studying classroom interactions.