Joseph Walsh, professor of classics and history, has received the 2007 Excellence in Teaching at the College Level Award from the American Philological Association (APA), the principal learned and professional society for classical studies in North America. Walsh, who chairs the College’s Department of Classics, accepted the award on Jan. 5 in Chicago at the plenary session of the APA’s annual meeting.

Founded in 1869, the APA presents up to three such awards each year to college professors in the United States and Canada. The award criteria include excellence in the teaching of Classics at the undergraduate level and the design and successful implementation of new courses and programs.

Walsh teaches courses in the Greek and Latin languages, on Roman and Greek history, Greek and Roman literature, classical mythology, the history of Christmas, and classes in the College’s interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Catholic Studies, Comparative Culture and Literary Studies, and Honors programs. In nominating him, Classics department colleague Martha Taylor described him as “a demanding teacher, but an exceptionally generous one as well . . . not merely an effective teacher but an inspiring one.”

Taylor’s nomination cited Walsh’s two successful stints as department chair and his innovative approach to his discipline, an approach she credits with the creation of a new major in Classical Civilization and the triumphant completion and publication of a new, thoroughly annotated translation of the second-century prison diary Perpetua’s Passion. Walsh led a group of promising Classics students through the painstaking labor of writing a new translation of the work and helped them steer it through its publication by Apprentice House, Loyola’s student-run imprint. 

Walsh holds a bachelor’s degree from Fairfield University, a master’s degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, all in Classics. He joined the Loyola College faculty in 1987.