Dr Benson has served as departmental director of undergraduate studies, director of the departmental honors program, content consultant for Project 2061, was a member of the NSF-Steering committee for "The Integral Role of Two-Year Colleges in the Preparation of SMET Teachers" and as a faculty consultant for several K-16 education initiatives in Maryland including a new on-line Master Program in the Life Sciences for high school biology teachers http://www.e-learning.umd.edu/mlfsc/. He is a discipline consultant for the Quality Undergraduate Education (QUE) initiative and a member of the steering committee for a large NSF Math-Science Partnership grant to the University System of Maryland. He has organized numerous local, nationals and international meetings on science education and faculty development.
He is currently a faculty fellow at the University of Maryland's Center for Teaching Excellence and an AAC&U visiting SENCER scientist for the 2003-2004 academic year. He is past chair of the Undergraduate Education Committee of the Board of Education of the American Society of Microbiology (ASM), current chair of ASM's Div-W (Teaching) and a member of the steering committee of The Coalition for Education in the Life Science (CELS). He is a former University of Maryland CTE-Lilly Teaching Fellow and has won numerous teaching Awards. In 2001, he was selected as a Carnegie Fellow in the Carnegie Academy for the Advancement of Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (CASTL). He is the 2002 CASE-Carnegie Maryland Professor of the Year and the recipient of a 2003 University of Maryland System Regents Teaching Award.