The following faculty were recognized for their Excellence in Teaching with a $500 award at the Center for Teaching Excellence Annual Recognition Dinner on Thursday, April 23, 2015 at the Rustic Lodge.
Maha Alawdat
English, Doctoral student in Composition and TESOL
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Award Category: Teaching Associate
Dr. Alawdat was nominated by Dr. Carolyn Wisniewski, assistant professor of Composition and TESOL. Dr. Alawdat's course design and student evaluations for English 121 Humanities Literature and English 202 Composition II (face-to-face and online) are exemplary. She strives to promote student learning and engagement by creating a positive and safe environment, particularly for non-majors.
Crystal Machado - No Picture Available
Professional Studies in Education
College of Education and Educational Technology
Award Category: Pedagogical Research
Dr. Machado's proposal provides evidence that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has become an important part of her practice because it allows her to think deeply about the way students respond to her teaching. She models how technology can be used to heighten the level of student engagement in the classroom and beyond. Dr. Machado freely shares her scholarship with students and faculty colleagues at IUP, regionally, nationally, and internationally. In her proposal, Dr. Machado described four projects that she has initiated at IUP to illustrate the variety of ways that she has engaged in pedagogical research.
Jeanine Mazak-Kahne
History
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Award Category: Experiential Education
Since 2009, Dr. Mazak-Kahne has been involved in public history education at the graduate level. She is celebrated for her redesign of curriculum and the creation of four new courses (museum, archives, oral history, and capstone seminar) with a core focus on service/experiential learning. She has also taught public history at the undergraduate level. Her work enables students to gain a thorough understanding, from theory to practice, of the role public historians play in giving historical voice to community identity and the ethical responsibility they have to balance accurate understanding of the past.
Gloria Park
English
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Award Category: Content Pedagogy
Dr. Park is commended for her development over time of four offerings of the graduate-level course World Englishes in Composition and Applied Linguistics. This course was realized as an outcome of Dr. Parks' recognition that the “multilinguals in her courses came from all walks of life in terms of their educational and professional backgrounds; however, they all had one area in common. They all used English as an Additional Language (EAL) and used Englishes from all parts of the globe.” Her documentation of the thoughtful progression of the World Englishes course development exemplifies her commitment to be sure the curriculum raised critical consciousness around linguistic diversity by embracing diverse epistemological and ontological perspectives on languages.
Teresa Shellenbarger
Nursing and Allied Health
College of Health and Human Services
Award Category: John Woolcock Teacher/Scholar for Reflective Practice
Dr. Shellenbarger conducted collaborated research using hermaneutic phenomenological methods to understand doctoral nursing students' background, knowledge, and expertise related to scholarly writing development. The outcome of her well-designed, multisite research study has been to facilitate writing development across the continuum of nursing education. Insights from this pedagogical research are being incorporated in the doctoral nursing program at IUP and at Chatham University. Knowledge from this research has “transformed her teaching, resulted in changes in nursing educational practices, yielded five scholarly publications and three international presentation, and impacted multiple nursing faculty and students.”
Melissa Swauger
Sociology
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Award Category: Experiential Education
Through service learning projects initiated with her Sociology of Family students, Dr. Swauger provided her students with a unique opportunity to see firsthand how social, economic, and political environments shape family life. Focus projects included Hunger Awareness Week and a Seedling Distribution project. The projects not only established new collaborations between IUP and multiple community organizations, it made a tremendous impact on residents in Indiana County. Students were empowered and changed through their involvement in a real world service learning experience. The tremendous impact of this work is sustained and continuing.