Kent Fairfield Named NJ Professor of the Year

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education have named Kent Fairfield at Fairleigh Dickinson University the 2012 New Jersey Professor of the Year. Fairfield was selected from nearly 300 top professors in the United States.

Kent Fairfield is associate professor of management at the Silberman College of Business at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His current research concerns the factors underlying sustainability management and interdependence between employees and managers. 

Fairfield has written about adult development and emphasizes learning from experience in his teaching, including requiring students to conduct community service projects and carry on mentor relationships with executives. Founding chair of the college’s student development committee, he is a leader of the new Professional Development Program, which aims to enrich the lives of students to better prepare them to be successful professionals and global citizens. He also currently supports FDU’s Institute for Sustainable Enterprise as interim executive director.

Fairfield has been named the college’s Teacher of the Year at each of the university’s two New Jersey campuses. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Human Resource Planning, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Journal of Healthcare Management, and Journal of Management Education.  He has made presentations at scores of academic and professional conferences in the U.S. and abroad. 

Formerly a vice president at the Chase Manhattan Bank, he founded Kent Fairfield Associates, consulting on teams, leadership development, and change management. He earned an MA and PhD in organizational psychology from Columbia University and an MBA in finance from the Harvard Business School.

CASE and the Carnegie Foundation have been partners in offering the U.S. Professors of the Year awards program since 1981. TIAA-CREF, one of America's leading financial services organizations and higher education's premier retirement system, became the principal sponsor for the awards ceremony in 2000. Additional support for the program is received from a number of higher education associations, including Phi Beta Kappa, which sponsors an evening congressional reception.

This year, a state Professor of the Year was recognized in 30 states and the District of Columbia. CASE assembled two preliminary panels of judges to select finalists. The Carnegie Foundation then convened the third and final panel, which selected four national winners. CASE and Carnegie select state winners from top entries resulting from the judging process. Professor Fairfield was selected from faculty members nominated by colleges and universities throughout the country.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center that supports needed transformations in American education through tighter connections between teaching practice, evidence of student learning, the communication and use of this evidence, and structured opportunities to build knowledge.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in London, Singapore and Mexico City, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education is a professional association serving educational institutions and the advancement professionals at all levels who work in alumni relations, communications, fundraising, marketing and other areas.