Ron Marken
Master Teacher Award - Spring 1985
Dr. Ron Marken was born in Camrose, Alberta. He received his BA in English at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota in 1960, his MA in English from the University of Alberta in 1968 and his PhD in English from the University of Alberta. He has completed research at Oxford University, the Queen's University in Belfast, Trinity College in Dublin, and the University of Sydney in Australia.
Dr. Marken has been a professor with the University of Saskatchewan since 1966 and was the Acting head of the Department of Native Studies from 1996-97 and the Head of the Department of English from 1991 - 1995. He specializes in Modern Irish Literature, Modern Drama, Prosody and Poetic Technique and Modern British Literature.
He has taught credit classes with the University of Alberta, the University of Victoria, Brock University, Prince Albert Penitentiary and with the Northern Indian Teachers Education Program. He has also developed and presented live television satellite credit courses in freshman English for use by 30 remote locations in Saskatchewan. He has also presented papers on University teaching to Conferences on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at Queen's University, McMaster University, McGill University, York University and Simon Fraser University.
His awards include the University of Saskatchewan Master Teacher Award and the 3M National University Teaching Fellowship.
He has published several publications including books, plays and several scholarly articles and reviews in academic journals in Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, West Germany and the United States.
He has delivered over twenty- five lectures on the craft of teaching.
He has also been involved in freelance broadcasting plus poetry and theatre reviews for CBC, both regionally and nationally, between 1974 and 1985.
Ron has been teaching Irish literature at the University of Saskatchewan for twenty years. He has published on the poetry of Yeats, as well as the work of contemporary Irish poets (Muldoon, Ormsby, Johnstone, Murphy, Hewitt, for instance). For six years he edited The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. His current research explores parallels between the experiences of colonized Irish and colonized Native peoples.
