Centre College Faculty

Charles Ken Keffer, Jr.

H.W. Stodghill Jr. and Adele H. Stodghill Professor of French and German

Telephone: 859-238-5237
E-mail: ken.keffer@centre.edu
Office: Crounse Hall—469

Ken Keffer is a professor of modern languages at Centre College, where he has taught since 1979. He has held the Stodghill Professorship in Modern Languages since its inception in 2004.

A gifted and innovative teacher, Keffer received Centre's “Rookie of the Year Award” in his first year at Centre and in 1988 received the David Hughes Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching. The awards reflects Keffer's deep affection for teaching language and the extraordinary effort he puts into teaching. To get his students involved in everyday use of French, Keffer has supervised their planting of a French-style garden (which he then proclaims as a territory of France), with all instructions and conversation carried on in French. His classes also have taken “French only” boating expeditions on a local lake, bike rides, and shopping forays in Danville (with the students “translating” between Keffer and the sales clerks). Keffer says simply: “I'm concerned with people really getting the thrill of speaking a foreign language. The best way to learn a language is to put it to use doing real things and going to real places.”

Keffer has spent three years in Europe serving as the teacher and director of Centre's residential study-abroad programs in Strasbourg and in London. He was a Fulbright Exchange Teacher in Germany for a year and has pursued advanced research at locations in France, Germany and Spain. Keffer has published scholarly articles and an award winning book (Mellen, 2001) on Montaigne's Essays.

Keffer holds a B.A. in French and English from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in romance languages from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

To find out what Reader’s Digest thinks about Dr. Keffer’s “The Art of Walking,” click here, and click here to see which of his courses was featured on Jeopardy!

In 2010, Keffer was named the 2010 Kentucky Professor the Year by The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more, click here.

File last updated: 9/21/12