Leonard Kaplan of Farmington Hills, a professor in the College of Education at Wayne State University, received a 1999 President's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The award recognizes faculty who have made outstanding contributions to teaching. This year, the program consists of six awards and includes an honorarium of $2,500 for each. Since 1977, 144 faculty have been recognized for their teaching with the Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Kaplan teaches and writes in the general area of curriculum and instruction with a special emphasis on the role of the family in education. His teaching strategies and instructional delivery methods bring educational concepts from the theory phase to practical application.

The impact of his teaching methods are best captured by the comment of a former student. "He didn't talk at us . . . he talked with us. He stimulated our thinking. . . Every evening driving home from class, my head was spinning with reflections of what had been discussed, what had been learned."

Kaplan, who has been at the university since 1973, has received a number of awards including a 1997 Distinguished Educator in the United States Award from the Association of Teacher Educators. He also received the 1997 Michigan Teacher Educator of the Year Award and a 1998 WSU College of Education Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Kaplan earned a bachelor's degree from Buffalo State Teacher's College, N.Y., a master's degree from Teacher's College at Columbia University and a doctorate from the University of Rochester.