FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Elliott West, longtime professor of history and noted author, has been named as the recipient of the Charles and Nadine Baum Faculty Teaching award for 2001.

The award is the highest honor bestowed on one faculty member at the end of each academic year, worth $5,000.

"This is certainly one of the great honors of my life," West said. "For me, life without teaching is a contradiction in terms. I can say the same for good music and good coffee, but teaching is even better because it has brought me together with thousands of wonderful students over the past thirty years. I'm very proud of this award."

West has taught history at the University since 1979. His specialty is history of the American frontier.

"No one is more deserving of the Baum Award than Elliott West," said Randall Woods, dean of Fulbright College. "In knowledge of subject matter, communication skills, commitment to students, and pure enthusiasm in the classroom, he is exemplary."

Among West’s teaching honors are: Arkansas Professor of the Year the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement and Support of Education, the Burlington Northern Foundation’s outstanding teacher for the University of Arkansas in 1995 and Master Teacher Award recipient for Fulbright College in 1995. He was elected to the Society of American Historians in 2000 and was recently named Hewitt Distinguished Scholar by the University of Northern Colorado in April 2001.

West has penned six books about the American frontier, including The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado in 1998, which is his most honored publication. The Contested Plains offers a new interpretation of western history, suggesting that the true conflict between white settlers and Native American tribes had little to do with ideology or lifestyle. Rather, it was a competition for resources that undercut Indian culture and set up white settlers for later disaster.

The book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Ray Allen Billington Prize, the highest publishing award in the field of Western history given by the Organization of American Historians, as well as the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians as Outstanding Book in American History.

The Contested Plains also won Best Work of Research Non-Fiction for 1998 by PEN Center USA West, as well as the Caughey WHA Prize as Best Book in Western American History published in 1998, the Caroline Bancroft Prize as Best Book on Western American History, among others. It was also included in the History Book Club and was once described by Walter Nugent of the University of Notre Dame as "the best book ever written about the Great Plains."

West has also written 16 book chapters, 37 articles in professional journals and popular magazines, 45 shorter pieces, and he has been a part of nearly 50 invited lectures and conference papers.

Four of his articles have received distinguished prizes, and his books have claimed 11 national awards. He received the prestigious Western Heritage Award in 1990 and 1996 as well.

According to Jeannie Whayne, department of history chair, Timothy P. Donovan, history department chair in the early 1980s, referred to West as "innovative" and "imaginative," and in the late 1980s, department chair Thomas C. Kennedy called him "the most innovative teacher in the department" and praised his "ability to introduce his research into teaching."

Whayne said West is an inventive teacher who for many years has supplemented lectures with slides, music, artwork, and cultural icons to dramatize historical development and illustrate the intersection of history with myth.

"Dr. West has met every teaching challenge offered him by this department and college with contagious enthusiasm and enormous success," Whayne said. "He has long been a dynamic force in the Fulbright College Honors program, where he has taught the United States survey courses, directed specialized colloquia and contributed to an innovative survey of world history and culture."

West is currently a member of the Arkansas Humanities Council and served on the Board of Trustees for the Arkansas Historical Association from 1991-95. He has also served on the editorial boards of four professional journals, including the Western Historical Quarterly in 1990-93 and has served on the editorial board of Montana: The Magazine of Western History since 1985.

"The University of Arkansas and Fayetteville have been a wonderful home for me and my family," West said. "There are no places like them, and for me, no places better."