Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching: Past Awardees

2024 Metcalf Award Recipients

Alexis Peri

College of Arts & Sciences, History

Alexis Peri is an associate professor of history and director of graduate studies at Boston University’s College of Arts & Sciences. She inspires her students to develop their powers of “historical imagination” and creative problem-solving. As she put it, “A creative mind is a resilient mind. It can solve challenges. It can build bridges. It can cultivate compassion.”

For a decade, Professor Peri has helped students understand history by immersing them in the intimate details of everyday life, especially in Russia and the Soviet Union. Through a combination of lecture, discussion, and creative projects, she brings the past to life and helps instill in students an attitude of empathy for those who came before.

Professor Peri’s colleagues and students laud her as a patient educator and passionate expert. Students frequently praise her “thought-provoking” approach to history. Using diaries, letters, literature, and even food, jokes, and fashion from the period, students explore how people lived, thought, and felt in their day-to-day lives as they experienced monumental historical moments. Students describe her as “honest, caring, and influential” and “a true teacher who puts students’ learning first.” According to her department chair, “Her view of education is capacious, and it includes individual growth, intellectual independence, and the future lives of her students.”

Professor Peri’s first book, The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad, won the Pushkin House Book Prize and the Wall Street Journal called it one of the ten best books on the Soviet home front. Her latest book is Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women. She is a Jeffrey Henderson Senior Research Fellow at the Boston University Center for the Humanities and a recipient of the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Undergraduate Teaching Prize in History. She earned her BA in history and psychology and her MA and PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley.

Veronika J. Wirtz

School of Public Health, Global Health

Veronika J. Wirtz is a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. Through teaching and committed mentorship, she brings the world to her classroom, highlighting the importance of global health policy, health systems, and equitable access to medicine, including supply chain management.  

For over a decade, Professor Wirtz has engaged students via lively class discussions, practice-based teaching, and her own vast expertise, exposing them to the complexity of global health policymaking and teaching them to think critically and creatively. She often invites leading experts into the classroom so that students gain knowledge about the realities of global public health work. One classroom observer noted, “I felt that people were there to figure out how to change the world.”

As a mentor and advisor, Professor Wirtz is renowned for her “outstanding ability to individually connect,” treating students as colleagues “with great respect for their abilities and experience.” She cofounded Emerging Women Leaders, a career-mentoring program that connects doctoral students with senior public health leaders. She launched a peer-to-peer research lab where students meet to discuss successes and challenges of current projects and share professional advice. She has helped dozens of students publish in peer-reviewed journals. In addition to her teaching and mentoring, she is an internationally recognized expert on medicine access and health systems and is regularly called on to consult with the World Health Organization. In the words of a colleague, “She is a rare faculty member who seems to do it all, and to the very highest standards.”

Professor Wirtz earned her BPharm from the University of Freiburg and her MSc and PhD from the University of London. A licensed pharmacist, published researcher, and world-renowned expert, she was the recipient of the 2023 Excellence in Research Mentoring Award and the 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award for Dedication to Student Learning from the School of Public Health.