Janna Shedd, Tonya Bates and Robin James have received the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ 2015 Teaching Awards for their dedication, teaching and research contributions and lasting impact on students.
Shedd of Religious Studies won the College’s Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member. Bates of Biological Sciences won the College’s Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Lecturer. James of Philosophy won the College’s Integration of Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award.
They received their awards at a ceremony on Monday, April 20. Also at the ceremony, the finalists for each award were honored.
The two finalists for the Outstanding Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member Award are Allison Hutchcraft of English and Lawrence Blydenburgh of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
The two finalists for the Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Lecturer Award are John Taylor of Mathematics and Statistics and Sue Hodge of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
The two finalists for the Integration of Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award are Joe Kuhns of Criminal Justice and Criminology and Paula Connolly of English.
“These faculty members help students understand that taking risks is part of intellectual and emotional growth,” said Dean Nancy A. Gutierrez. “They help students understand that their capacity for success is constrained only by obstacles of their own invention. This is the power of a liberal arts education.”
Janna Shedd: Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member
Shedd is a part-time lecturer in the Religious Studies Department of the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where she has taught since 2009. Janna completed her master’s degree at UNC Charlotte and her bachelor’s degree at UNC Asheville. Her research interests are South and East Asian religions, the effects of globalization on religion and culture, and multicultural education. For the last 18 months she has volunteered at a weekly community and educational outreach program for local Southeast Asian youth.
She has traveled to China for month-long excursions to religious sites across the country and was adopted by a monkey on her last trip three years ago. Shedd hopes to expand her travel destinations and the frequency of her trips in the future. Her goals for the next two years include publishing articles on teaching religion, leading a student tour group to Daoist sites in China, and expanding her scholarly expertise to include Japanese religions.
She earned her master’s degree in religious studies from UNC Charlotte in 2009 and has been a part-time lecturer with a 4-4 load since fall semester of that year. With her tremendous sense of initiative and imagination, she has developed courses, including an online version of Death and the Afterlife.
Students describe her as engaging, passionate and patient. They express appreciation for the way she shows them other ways of life that differ from their own, and how their respect for other cultures and choices grows through her example. She shows this respect in the classroom.
One student commented, “Professor Shedd was possibly one of the most impressive, intelligent and compelling professors I have had the good fortune of enjoying in five semesters. She was able to get even the most timid and quiet student engaged. Neither obscure nor fatuous questions seemed to slow her down, and if ever she did not know an answer, she always found it out for us.”
To explain her motivation for teaching, Shedd said, “By the time they leave my class at the end of the semester, I hope that each student feels more confident in their ability to take on the world and all it has to offer. In the end, I am really trying to teach students how to teach themselves, to value each other, and to see their own education as relevant, active, and ongoing.”
Tonya Bates: Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Lecturer
A native North Carolinian, Bates earned a master’s degree in biology and as a graduate student taught introductory biology and microbiology labs at UNC Charlotte. After graduation, she worked as a researcher in industry, at UMASS Amherst, and at Carolinas Medical Center, which provided her with a broad range of clinical and technical skills. Along this journey, she discovered that more than doing bench research, she enjoyed sharing biology through teaching and mentoring.
Bates is currently a lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences and recently took on the role of undergraduate coordinator. She teaches majors and non-science majors in a variety of courses including Principles of Biology, Nature of Science and Current Topics, and Public Health for educators. The undergraduate coordinator position enables her to have an impact on the undergraduate curriculum of biology majors in a way that is not possible as an instructor.
By participating in the Communication across the Curriculum program, she has initiated improving writing in her department by facilitating the use of peer writing mentors in select writing intensive courses.
Recently she was selected to participate in the Top 40 faculty academy to write a resource guide for new faculty in these large enrollment freshman courses. In her spare time, she promotes science in the community by participating in events such as the UNC Charlotte Science and Technology Expo and Science Olympiad. With colleagues, she continues to develop many professional development workshops for middle, high school, and AP biology teachers.
Bates’ other scientific achievements and involvement include participation in the SouthEast Summer Institute for Undergraduate Education in Biology in 2012, the position of liaison for the Center for Teaching and Learning, election to the Department Advisory Committee, and representing for the Women in Science program at UNC Charlotte.
One student nominator said this: “She is able to make small group projects work in a large class of 200 students, which seems like a magic trick to me.” Another student nominator said, “Professor Bates constantly gives creative analogies and finds ways to link what we are learning in class to our own lives. She is truly a phenomenal professor.” On of these creative endeavors includes “DNA Theater,” during which Bates and her students “dynamically act out the processes of DNA transcription and translation.”
Bates said, “Since 2010, I’ve taught biology to approximately 3,000 students. Each of these students has provided an opportunity to re-examine and reflect on why I do things the way I do inside and outside the classroom…. My personal goal has been to use my background as a scientist as an opportunity to do research to improve, develop, and refine my teaching and ultimately be able to communicate and disseminate this knowledge.”
Robin James: Integration of Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award
James is an associate professor of Philosophy at UNC Charlotte. She is the author of two books: Resilience & Melancholy: pop music, feminism, and neoliberalism, which was published by Zero books in February 2015, and The Conjectural Body: gender, race and the philosophy of music, which was published by Lexington Books in 2010.
Her work on feminism, race, contemporary continental philosophy, pop music, and sound studies has appeared in The New Inquiry, Noisey, SoundingOut!, Hypatia, differences, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. She is also a digital sound artist and musician, and often works as a member of citation:obsolete. She blogs at its-her-factory.com and is a regular contributor to Cyborgology and xcphilosophy.
For James, the integration of teaching and research means using classroom conversations as a place to begin and continue her own research practice and teaching students some of the practices, including blogging, public writing, creative research in sound and the process of writing a book. “Often the questions I bring to class are ones I’m still working on, to which I don’t yet have answers,” James said. “The classroom is a place where the students and I work through philosophical questions, concepts, and problems together.”
Shannon Sullivan, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, said, “[I]t is not so much her scores that make Dr. James truly deserving of this award. It is what she does in her classes. Dr. James and her students do philosophy together.”
“As I understand it, philosophy is not so much a content […] but more of a how, a doing, a practice. So in all my classes, we do philosophy, we think,” James said.
James plans to integrate students’ thinking with media and philosophy. She has developed a new team-taught course for spring 2016, supported by an SOTL grant, that will give students the opportunity to engage philosophy via new media including film, video, websites and social media. They will interview Charlotte people on topics that connect philosophy to their lives. This will continue her practice of giving students hands-on experience developing philosophical ideas in ways that model what scholars do.
Students commend James for being, as one student described it, “a valuable living resource.” The student commented, “She encourages us, and in doing so helps us to realize the potential works that lie within us. But what distinguishes her from other professors I have is not just her ability to understand her students, but her affinity for understanding her students.”
Words compiled and edited by Taryn Walls, Student Communications Assistant
Images: Lynn Roberson, College Communications Director.
Pictured in top photo (left to right): Tonya Bates, Janna Shedd, Robin James, Nancy Gutierrez
