Gary B. Nash

---

 

Infectious enthusiasm marks the teaching style of Gary Nash, whose ratings in student surveys improve steadily year by year, but Nash is more than just an outstanding professor of history. Probably no other UCLA faculty member has been as successful in promoting excellence in teaching as he has. He has taken a leadership role both in developing new courses and in creating programs that share teaching skills with other teachers. Most recently, Nash assumed the associate directorship of the New National Endowment for the Humanities – UCLA Center for History in the Schools, helping to redesign the state’s history curriculum.

Nash played a key role in revitalizing UCLA’s professional schools seminar program, recruiting dozens of professional school faculty to teach lower-division seminars. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nash was instrumental in expanding the United States history course listings to include African American history, women’s history and American Indian history, offering the first versions of the course himself. His colonial and revolutionary American history classes consistently attract large undergraduate followings. One sophomore student wrote of Nash: “[H]e excited us with the electrical experiments of Benjamin Franklin, moved us with the songs of Southern black slaves and challenged us with demanding and fair exams.”

Perhaps Nash’s most profound gift, however, is his attitude toward his students. He continually strives to expand student horizons while remaining committed to the principle that history has something important to say to them about their role as citizens and human beings.