2014 CHANCELLOR’S AWARD FOR TEACHING EXCELLENCE NHTI FACULTY MEMBER
Recipient: CATHERINE EATON (ENGLISH)
Nomination Criteria • Teaching innovation • Impact on Students • Community Involvement • College Service • Professional Development • Other (special endeavors, research, leadership)
Cathy excels in every category listed in the description of this award: “Teaching Innovation; Impact on Students; Community Involvement; College Service; Professional Development; Other (special endeavors, research, leadership).”
As the coordinator for the Writing Center, she has worked tirelessly and successfully for over ten years to expand services for students and faculty, including tutoring, grammar instruction, essay writing, and APA/MLA documentation-in short, every part of the writing process. These services are available to all faculty and students in all disciplines. She was integral in the design of the Study Solutions Lab, which supports students’ efforts to discover their joy of reading and learn to focus, retain information, manage time, improve study habits, and increase awareness of their learning style. Most recently, she has initiated innovative online tutoring services. Cathy also works closely with ESOL office in helping ESOL students transition from their ESOL classes to mainstream classes, providing a network of professionals that support their development. The services mentioned above are vital not only for students, but also content faculty and faculty working in the Writing Center as they expand their professional experiences. Teaching Innovation comes naturally to Cathy. It’s who she is. For instance, her enthusiasm and commitment has made her an integral part of NHTI’s recent National Endowment for Humanities “Bridging Cultures” grant which focuses on using literature and mindfulness to increase cultural understanding. In fact, this grant work was a natural extension of the work she had been doing in her classes for years to bring students together, to communicate, to share in order to understand and explore diverse experiences and cultures. For example, she regularly brings students, faculty, and community members from a variety of disciplines into the classroom to share their knowledge, experiences, and stories-including dancing from Albania, carpets from Morocco, music from Rwanda, art from Mexico, student panels (including refugee and LGBT), and published writers, most recently a return of Terry Farish, author of The Good Braider. Her curricula often includes invitations to students to become involved with various facets of campus life, and her students frequently accept those invitations, participating in yoga, meditation, Sycamore Community Gardens, Multicultural Day, Conversation Partners, and student clubs, including The Alliance, MACKK, and The NHT “Eye”. She has worked tirelessly on curriculum development that focuses on building community to such an extent that students, time and again, will request classes with her even if they don’t need them to graduate. Furthermore, she actively pursues and publishes her own writing, bringing those experiences to her classes, sharing processes, challenges, and successes with students.
Cathy not only brings students together, but her colleagues as well. For instance, she is: deliberate in her advocacy for adjunct faculty, encouraging of faculty and staff when possible to participate in Wellness programs on campus (and she participates with them), ready and willing to share information, resources, and time for brainstorming and reflection with faculty, encouraging of others to pursue their ideas and passions, helping them to do so when possible, actively engaged in department meetings, passionately and realistically probing issues to identify what is possible and to ensure high quality, welcoming of new members of the department and helping them acclimate to NHTI.
In short, Cathy is a role model for colleagues and students.