The Marquette Core Curriculum Committee announced Dr. George Cashman, professor of finance and Robert Bernard Bell, Sr., Chair in Real Estate in the College of Business Administration, as the winner of the 2026 MCC Teaching Excellence Award.
The MCC Teaching Excellence Award was created in 2021 to honor instructors whose “effective approaches to course design and delivery have an extraordinary positive impact on students’ progress toward the MCC’s six learning outcomes.” This year’s process put added emphasis on the Discovery tier of the MCC, comprising courses that examine several key themes of contemporary importance across a wide spectrum of scholarly disciplines.
Dr. Michael Olson, teaching associate professor of philosophy and director of the MCC, is particularly drawn to Cashman’s “Introduction to Commercial Real Estate” course.
“The course nicely illustrates that the MCC’s goal — to produce reflective graduates oriented by a well-educated concern for social justice — is not something Core classes simply add on top of college and departmental offerings,” Olson said. “George’s teaching shows how ethical reflection and questions about the common good grow out of every corner of a Marquette education. The work of the MCC is to help students see the connections between these moments in their education and to facilitate conversations between students in different colleges about how they might collaborate to imagine and realize solutions to the big challenges of the next 25 years.”
REAL 3001, a Discovery-tier course in the Individuals and Communities theme, uses commercial real estate as a framework for examining how individual incentives, institutional rules and history shape communities and lived experience. The course introduces foundational analytical tools — such as valuation, risk assessment and market analysis — while integrating the Marquette Core Curriculum’s emphasis on ethical reasoning.
Through applied assignments and structured reflection, students connect technical concepts to broader social questions, particularly in housing, where discussions explore how policy decisions and historical factors have contributed to segregation and unequal access to opportunity. Guided by dialogue, interdisciplinary perspectives and evolving coursework informed by student feedback, the class challenges students to engage complex issues thoughtfully, emphasizing critical reflection, inclusive discussion and a deeper understanding of shared responsibility.
“The work George — and so many other amazing instructors across the university — does in his classroom is essential for connecting students’ professional aspirations and expertise, on the one hand, and the ethical formation characteristic of Jesuit education, on the other,” Olson said. “His class is an excellent example of the kind of whole-person education at the heart of what Marquette aspires to be.”
Cashman received the honor at the College of Business Administration all-college meeting on Friday, April 24.
