A professor in an introductory science course discovers that some students are falling behind in their work, apparently because they haven’t bought the textbook. “Buy the book, don’t be cheap,” he exhorts. For students who have a parental credit card, or even their own, there is no excuse. But for those of much more modest means, the $300 cost is prohibitive: an insuperable barrier, in the first gateway course, to a hoped-for career in medicine.

That sort of problem animated the 18 speakers, from selective institutions across the country, at the Harvard Summit on Excellence in Higher Education, held September 21 and 22 and devoted to the theme of “academic inclusion.” At a time when President Drew Faust’s Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging has brought its draft findings before the community for review, the summit’s academic theme focused on the heart of the teaching mission.

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Congratulations to Learning Lab faculty partner Elena Kramer on receiving the 2016 Fannie Cox Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching. Over the past two years, Kramer worked with Bok Center Media, Literacy, and Visualization Fellows Morgan Furze and Claire Meaders to develop creative assignments for her course.

Elena Kramer, chair of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Bussey Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and ...

For Elisa New, teaching poetry to the uninitiated has been as gratifying as teaching English concentrators and confirmed poetry lovers.

Her Gen Ed course, “Poetry in America,”  attracts students from across disciplines. Now the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature wants to reach an even broader audience in a new course called “Poetry in America for Teachers: The City from Whitman to Hip Hop.” The online offering — created, in part, with a new faculty fellowship from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning — aims to give secondary school instructors rich...