Princeton Review names UF professor Steve Noll among nation's 300 best professors

A half hour into professor Steve Noll’s American History lecture, he’d already paused six times for waves of laughter.

Tuesday’s presentation was about the economic incentives behind slavery, and Noll had already impersonated an ignorant high school teacher, cracked jokes about Florida State students and made a historical reference to Elvis Presley. And he was just warming up.

“Class can be both entertaining and intellectually challenging,” Noll said. “If I’m just going to sit there and drone on, why should they even bother coming?”

His teaching methods may seem unorthodox, but they’re partly why Noll and two other UF professors were named among the 300 best professors in the U.S. by the Princeton Review....