Mark Maier, Glendale Community College (CA), is the 2023 recipient of the AEA Distinguished Economic Education Award. Mark retired from Glendale Community College (CA) as Professor of Economics in June 2023 but continues to remain active in the economic education community.

Mark’s impact on economic education over the past thirty years is remarkable in its breadth and depth. His scholarship of teaching and learning in economics is both extensive and wide-ranging, promoting evidence-based instructional practices through scholarly publications, grant-funded research, and national economics education workshops. His work with the AEA Committee on Economic Education (2002-2008), where he initiated an enduring and popular annual ASSA economic education poster session, is emblematic of his pragmatic efforts to improve economic education nationally. In addition, Mark co-facilitated workshops as part of the AEA’s Teaching Innovations Program in 2006 and 2007.

Mark has been a tireless champion of efforts to support and enhance economic education at the community college level. His work in this area led to numerous state and national teaching workshops and a national teaching newsletter focused on economics instruction in two-year institutions. He has been an inspiring mentor to scores of economics instructors, who regularly highlight Mark’s high-impact teaching practices, support of their careers, and encouragement to participate in national economic education activities. Mark has also been a strong advocate for cross-disciplinary collaborations, which have informed and enhanced teaching practices in economics and led to valuable ideas and strategies on how to effectively include two-year colleges in initiatives to strengthen undergraduate economic education.

Partnering with other economics education researchers, Mark was the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for five National Science Foundation (NSF) economic education grants totaling more than $1.26 million, including a project developing the widely-recognized Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics online pedagogic portal. The Starting Point site contains eighteen modules, each describing a specific teaching method, how to use it in economics, and a library of free activities that instructors can adopt or adapt for use in their own courses. Overall, these five projects helped to introduce economics instructors to a variety of evidence-based teaching practices, many originally developed in other disciplines, such as Just-in-Time Teaching and Team-Based Learning. In addition, Mark has led or co-led five additional NSF grants totaling nearly $400,000 specifically supporting community college economics instructors, with the goals of better integrating these instructors into the American Economic Association’s economic education community, improving overall community college economics instruction, and building community among two-year college economics instructors.

Throughout his career, Mark’s broad knowledge, creative ideas, inclusive approach, and willingness to look outside of economics for “what works” have contributed to moving the economics discipline toward more intentional evidence-based teaching practices. Through a collaborative, community-building approach, Mark has connected many two-year college instructors to national economic education efforts and mentored their ongoing engagement in the discipline.

Charles (Charlie) Holt, University of Virginia (UVA), is the inaugural recipient of the AEA Distinguished Economic Education Award. Charlie has served on the UVA faculty since 1989 and is currently the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Political Economy in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

Charlie is a renowned experimental economist who has made significant contributions to economic education through the development of experiments for the economics classroom. He tirelessly promotes the use of experiments and provides resources that enable other economic educators to adopt this pedagogical technique. Charlie’s support comes in the form of published articles on experiments for face-to-face classroom use as well as the creation and maintenance of VeconLab, an online interface for running experiments. The computerized format of VeconLab makes adoption of experiments possible for instructors of large enrollment and/or remote classes. VeconLab is freely available, creating accessibility and opportunity for thousands of economic educators around the world.

In addition to Charlie’s contributions to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, he has actively engaged others in this work. As part of an NSF funded project, Charlie organized and led annual workshops where economics faculty were both shown good examples of classroom experiments for teaching and organized into groups to create new classroom experiments, some of which were ultimately published in the Journal of Economic Education.

Charlie’s mentoring of students and faculty stretches far beyond these NSF funded workshops. Charlie has served as a mentor to countless undergraduate and graduate students and faculty over the years. Students and colleagues alike speak of Charlie’s investment in them – including inviting them to work on projects, funding their experiments, and aiding in networking. As evidence of his commitment to and excellence in teaching and mentoring, Charlie was selected as the 2008 recipient of the Southern Economic Association’s Elzinga Teaching Award and the 2014 recipient of UVA’s Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award. Further, Charlie’s commitment to economic education is also demonstrated by his service on the AEA’s Committee on Economic Education (2000-2004) and active membership in the Society of Economic Educators.

The fruit of Charlie’s career perfectly demonstrates the synergies that arise when an economist’s research passion is also carefully and creatively applied to teaching endeavors.  His lifelong efforts enrich the experience of thousands of students and improve the teaching experience for hundreds of economic educators. He has nurtured a pedagogical technique and created a platform that allows us to demonstrate important economic outcomes day after day. Through a career marked with diligence, example, and generosity, Charlie has become an educator of educators, enhancing economic education in classrooms around the world.