2024 Semifinalists

Dr. Katy Harriger is a Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University, where she holds the F. Michael Crowley Distinguished Faculty Fellowship. She also serves as the Faculty Director for the university’s study away program in Washington DC.  She teaches courses on American politics and American constitutional law.

Robert D. Johnston is Professor of History and Director of the Teaching of History program at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he has taught since 2003. He specializes in the teaching of history, the Progressive Era, and American democracy and populism. He has published the award-winning The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism (Princeton University Press) and numerous articles on the politics of historiography. He is current working on Pox, Populism, and Politics: Three Centuries of American Controversies over Vaccination (Oxford University Press). Johnston has edited or co-edited books on the American middle class, 20th-century American rural politics, and the politics of natural healing. He has served as co-editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and is currently co-editor of the teaching section of the Journal of American History.

Autar Kaw is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of South Florida whose scholarly interests include engineering education research, adaptive, blended, and flipped learning, open courseware development, composite materials mechanics, and bascule bridge design. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Florida Department of Transportation, and Wright Patterson Air Force Base.