DIGGS TEACHING SCHOLAR AWARDS - 2001

Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies;  Dr. Richard Goff, Associate Professor of Engineering Fundamentals; and Dr. Monte Boisen, Professor of Mathematics, are the newly selected 2001 Diggs Teaching Scholars.
The Diggs Program was begun in 1992 to recognize and foster excellence, imagination, and innovation in linking scholarship and teaching. Each recipient is presented with a plaque, and a cash award goes to both the recipient and the nominating department. The Diggs Program thereby recognizes the essential role of both faculty and department in developing strong teaching scholars.
The Diggs selection process is unique among faculty awards in that the finalists must participate in a formal interview in which they share teaching strategies with the selection committee. Because more than half of this year’s nominees were previous winners of important University awards, the 2001 interviews were particularly stimulating and challenging. The committee was grateful for the opportunity to learn from such an outstanding group of teachers.

Stacey Floyd-Thomas joined the faculty of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in 1997. Since then, she has been appointed coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Interdisciplinary Task Force. She has transformed a number of courses and helped to put in place new degree options in Leadership and Social Change, Global Studies, and Creative Processes. She has received CEUT summer faculty and globalizing initiatives grants and an ASPIRES grant, under which she has collaborated to establish an Interdisciplinary Study Abroad opportunity at the University of Cheik Anta Diop in Senegal.
Nominator Laura Gillman says that Dr. Floyd-Thomas’s teaching “generates dreams and possibilities in the souls of her students.” Teaching courses in Religious Studies, Black Studies, Women’s Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies, she finds ethics and social justice to be points of cohesion in all of her courses. In addition to a wide variety of written texts, she uses service learning, internships, and field study as opportunities for students to implement their theoretical knowledge in more active contexts.
Student comments reveal the impact of her teaching:
“Dr. Floyd-Thomas embodies all the excellence and noble spirit of the academic institution.”
“(Her) teaching style is energetic, fresh, and captivating.”
“Dr. Floyd-Thomas utilizes every resource available to her, including the intelligence and diversity of her students, to provide an educational experience which is not lofty and confusing but real and applicable to each of our lives.”

Richard Goff, who typically teaches three or four sections per semester and advises 150 to 200 students, has created a revolutionary change in the freshman engineering program . According to Engineering Fundamentals Director Hayden Griffin, “Richard pioneered the work with Lego Mindstorms for allowing students to design, create, and test robotic cars. The finale of the experience was a competition in which the students’ creations competed against each other to negotiate a maze and find a target on the floor. Photos of the students clearly show their interest and excitement with this effort.”
        Dr. Goff has also collaborated with Professor Mitzi Vernon of the Industrial Design Program in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in creating mixed groups of students from the two colleges which design and build robotic creations. As Goff says, “The top students will learn no matter what the teacher does. But many creative students drop out of engineering every year because they do not experience connections between theoretical learning and the practical application of knowledge.”
Dr. Goff is the recipient of three Certificates of Teaching Excellence and the Sporn Award for Excellence in Teaching of Engineering Subjects. He is the Director of the Frith Freshman Engineering Design Laboratory.  Working with colleagues, he has received a CEUT Summer Faculty Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Design as well as three SUCCEED grants for Hands-On Laboratory, Early Design, and Curriculum Renewal. An anonymous student comments,  “Goff is the kind of teacher that you look up to and respect, because he respects his students. ...Always very approachable, friendly, and peaceful. Has some really cool experiences to share as well.”

Monte Boisen, who has taught mathematics at Virginia Tech for 31 years, has received four Certificates of Teaching Excellence, the Wine Award, the Arts and Sciences Diversity Award, and the Xcaliber Award, among many others. As Mathematics Departmental Coordinator for Minority Recruitment and Affairs, he founded the Association of African-American Mathematicians at Virginia Tech, which engages in a variety of efforts to recruit and retain minority students. He has taken a leadership role in transforming the Math Emporium so that, in the words of his colleague Bud Brown, “it places the student in the centernot the machines, not the material.”
        Dr. Boisen says, “Our ability to support the success of students is greatly dependent on the degree to which we value their individual diferences. If all we mean by wanting diversity on this campus is for there to be a lot of isolated people with diverse backgrounds, then we have achieved diversity on paper, but we will never really mature as a University. If, on the other hand, we learn to value the ways people are different--to incorporate their dreams, their talents, and their goals into the fabric of the University-- then we have an opportunity to make this an exciting place, a place where all students and faculty have an opportunity to grow.”
        As one former student says, “I continue to recommend Dr. Boisen without any reservation. He is truly a marvel among college professors.”

In Fall 2001, the three new Diggs Teaching Scholars will lead a discussion focused on their recent work. Dr. Floyd-Thomas will discuss the raising of ethical issues for the goal of social justice in the classroom in a manner that encourages students to examine difficult and personally-challenging material. Dr. Goff will present his vision of  “Hands-On Collaborative Learning” as an approach to engineering fundamentals which better serves a diverse student population. Dr. Boisen will discuss the essential role of care, concern, and respect in the manner in which teachers a) interact with women and minority students, and b) apply technology to support learning.