Professor Ed Folsom received a 2005 President and Provost Award For Teaching Excellence. The award was created in 2003-04 as a university-wide recognition for faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained high level of teaching.

Professor Folsom is Carver Professor of English and an internationally recognized scholar of American literature, specializing in the work and influence of Walt Whitman. Folsom has taught in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences since 1976, directed the General Education Literature Program from 1982 to 1985 and 1989 to 1992, and served as chair of the English department from 1991 to 1995. He won a Regents' Award for Faculty Excellence in 1996 and a Collegiate Teaching Award in 2003. Folsom was an early innovator in classroom technology, developing the online Walt Whitman Archive and participating in a joint effort with colleagues nationwide to create The Classroom Electric, a web-based resource for teaching the poetry of Whitman and Emily Dickinson. His colleagues admire his "intellectual generosity -- a continual willingness to share his time, knowledge, and excitement for learning with students and faculty," and students say his enthusiasm inspires them to probe and think about literature as they never have before. Students praise his "personal warmth and approachability" and those who have gone on to teach elsewhere say that his model of teaching is the standard they try to live up to.