Dr. Marc Baer, professor of history at
Hope College, has been chosen to receive the college's
second annual "Vanderbush-Weller Development Fund" award.

Dr. Marc Baer, professor of history at
Hope College, has been chosen to receive the college's
second annual "Vanderbush-Weller Development Fund" award.

The award recognizes and supports the efforts of
Hope faculty and staff who make extraordinary contributions
to the lives of students. Baer will be recognized during a
dinner held on Thursday, May 3, in conjunction with the May
meeting of the college's Board of Trustees.

"He has an exceptional commitment to students,"
said Hope senior Louis Canfield of Whitehall, who is
president of the college's Student Congress and a member of
the award's selection committee. "He went on a mission trip
for a week last year to Queens, New York. He coordinates
the Veritas Forum. He coordinates the Pew Society Program."

"He does a great job of interacting with students
above and beyond what's required of a professor," Canfield
said.

Baer spearheaded the effort to organize the "Hope
Veritas Forum," which debuted in January of 1997 and has
been held every two years since. The three-day event
considers Christian faith and truth from a variety of
perspectives.

He is also director of Hope's Pew Society Program,
which encourages students considering an academic career to
relate their faith to the work they hope to do. He serves
as the college's faculty representative for the Truman,
Mellon, Javits and Davies-Jackson scholarship programs.

In the summer of 1998, Baer was part of a group of
Hope students, faculty and staff that spent three weeks in
India, sharing the experience of Hope's contemporary worship
program with colleagues in Indian Christian colleges. He
and other participants made a presentation concerning the
program during the college's January, 1999, "Winter
Happening." In March of 2000, he co-led a spring break
mission trip to Queens, N.Y., organized by the college's
Campus Ministries Office.

He was the Opening Convocation speaker in August
of 1997, when the current graduating senior class was the
newly-arrived freshman class.

Baer is a specialist in British history with a
secondary emphasis in European history. His research
interests include British social, cultural and political
history from the 18th century to the present, and modern
British urban history.

He is the author of the book "Theatre and Disorder
in Late Georgian London," published in 1992 by Oxford
University Press, as well as of numerous scholarly articles
and book reviews. His several awards and honors include
three fellowships through the Summer Seminar program of the
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). He was named
"Teacher of the Year" at Frostburg State University in 1983,
shortly before he came to Hope.

He has been a member of the Hope faculty since
1983. He joined the faculty as an assistant professor of
history, and was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and
full professor in 1992.

The "Vanderbush-Weller Development Fund" was
established in honor of long-time Hope professor and
football coach Alvin Vanderbush of Bloomington, Minn., who
retired in 1972. It was created by Ken and Shirely Weller
of Knoxville, Iowa. Ken Weller is one of Vanderbush's
former players and also a former Hope faculty colleague.