Characteristics of 30 University of Illinois college teachers judged to be best at stimulating student curiosity and their teaching practices were studied in 1978, based on interviews and results of student evaluations of teacher performance. Attention was directed to undergraduate and graduate training, teaching experience during graduate study, teaching experience since receiving the doctorate, courses regularly taught, grading practice and kinds of exams employed, and the teacher's self-perceptions regarding their grading practices. The teachers also described their classroom activities and instructional materials. The special strengths of the teaching methods employed by the respondents were as follows: the use of vivid illustrative examples, hands-on experiences (labs, field trips, and clinical case studies), and brain teasing problems, with emphasis upon questioning and interactive lecturing. The mean number of years of teaching experience was 13 with a range from 3 to 30 years, and nearly all of the teachers taught both undergraduate and graduate courses. The commonly stated characteristics ascribed to the teachers by students to open-ended questions on course evaluation questionnaires were enthusiasm, ability to stimulate thinking, willingness to listen, humor, questioning techniques, and "best instructor." The single feature of the interviews that appeared clearly important was the teachers' encouragement of students' questions and their use of rhetorical questions in their lectures. The professors seemed to be interested in their students not just as students but as persons. Their teaching methods emphasized problematic content that stimulated curiosity, thought, and interest. Examples of teaching exercises are included. (SW)