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Congratulations to Dr. Allen Frantzen on receiving the Medieval Academy of America's Teaching Excellence Award for 2013.

From the Medieval Academy of America:

CARA Teaching Award

The Committee on Centers and Regional Associations is pleased to present the CARA Teaching Award to Allen J. Frantzen, professor of English at Loyola University Chicago.  Allen, a truly dedicated teacher, has made substantial and important contributions to teaching medieval studies at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.  He has also written successful introductory-level books directed toward a general or undergraduate audience.  His electronic projects, now affiliated with the Loyola Center for Digital Humanities, included online research and database tools freely available to his own and others' students.

But Allen's commitment to pedagogy extended out of the medieval world into the most urgent needs of our contemporary culture.  In 1992, his vision and determination founded the Loyola Community Literacy Center, a community service organization based at the university to provide individual assistance to all adults, both native-born and foreign-born, who wish to improve their reading, writing, and speaking skills in English.

Allen has inspired, guided, pushed, challenged and helped not only his own large group of dissertation students in multiple sub-disciplines of medieval studies, but also undergraduates who then went on for PhDs and success elsewhere, and, probably more importantly, countless other undergraduates who went on to happy and successful lives, inspired by Allen, trained to be better thinkers and writers, and imbued with an interest in and appreciation for medieval literature and culture.

Allen's personal measure of success was how much others achieved with his guidance.  On that score, few can have been as successful.  Allen richly deserves the prestigious recognition of the CARA Teaching Award.

CARA Teaching Award Committee 2013
James Murray, Western Michigan University
Lilla Kopar, Catholic University of America
Frank Klaassen, University of Saskatchewan