DIGGS TEACHING SCHOLAR AWARDS - 2004

Robert Siegle (English) is honored today for his teaching that is global in reach, technologically savvy, and humane in nature.  In a department of strong teachers, Bob sets himself apart by exhibiting both excellence in the classroom and dedication to program-wide curricular innovation.  Teaching a wide range of courses, Siegle consistently receives superlative evaluations from students.  Appreciation of his innovative approaches by students and colleagues led to his selection by the English Department to lead the revision of the entire composition program twice.

Another example of his innovation is exemplified in his development of a course in Postcolonial Cultural Studies, which was enriched by his Fulbrights to Sri Lanka and India.  This course led him to develop The Asia Connection, a multi-media website funded by Virginia Tech’s Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the University Office of International Programs, the Center for Innovative Learning, and the College of Arts and Sciences.  More recently, Siegle’s interest in contemporary literature, film, architecture, and music led him to produce a series of new courses in Contemporary Culture.  Today, Siegle will discuss the difficulties of connecting research and teaching and how the two can be synergized within environments of deliberate design in his presentation titled, Theory for Beginners.

Both Catherine Eckel and Sheryl Ball stand out individually in the field of Economics and have a history of collaboration with one another.  Their work together led to the development of their topic of discussion today: Using Our WITS:  A system for adapting research experiments for teaching economics. Designed to introduce students to the structure and conduct of research while using experiments to illustrate the process, this approach enables active learning in large class sections. While each has a distinct research agenda, they have in common the methodology of experimental economics.  Their research is inherently interdisciplinary, crossing boundaries between economics and psychology, sociology, and even biology, with most of their work conducted in the Lab for the Study of Human Thought and Action, a dedicated behavioral research lab that Catherine directs. 

Since joining the Virginia Tech faculty in 1983, Professor Catherine Eckel, has developed three new courses and co-created two with Sheryl Ball.  She has served as Principle Investigator or Co-PI on six teaching-related grants, including two teaching/learning awards; one major CIL grant with Sheryl; two from NSF and one from the Mellon Foundation. In 2003, she was appointed one of four University Advance Professors, co-directing a $3.5 million award from NSF’s Advance Program, to promote women in science and engineering.

Sheryl Ball was recruited to Virginia Tech in 1992.  Since then, she has developed three courses on her own and two with Catherine.  Her honors include six teaching-related grants, a grant from the National Institute of Dispute Resolution, and she is a member of a team at Virginia Tech that was awarded an NSF IGERT grant to develop a joint graduate program in engineering and business. In 2002, she received the Virginia Tech Advising Award for revamping the undergraduate advising system as Director of Undergraduate Studies, and in 2003, was awarded a College of Arts and Sciences Certificate of Teaching Excellence. 

In her six years at Virginia Tech, Sharon Johnson (Foreign Languages and Literatures), has distinguished herself as a pioneer in the pursuit of innovative pedagogical and scholarly initiatives for cross-cultural communication and education. This has gained her recognition in many ways, including a Certificate of Teaching Excellence in 2001. Perhaps most notable is her creation of the Images, Myths, and Realities Across Cultures (IMRAC) project involving students at Virginia Tech, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the Institut National des Telecommunications, one of France’s top ten business and engineering schools.  The project is designed to provide students with the opportunity to exchange ideas on a selection of themes and contemporary cultural issues by having them analyze and discuss images and texts pertaining to France and the United States through web-based chats, email, and simultaneous, live video-conferencing. It is this project that is the topic of her discussion today titled, The Pleasures and Paradoxes of Cross-cultural Pedagogy: How Linguistic and Cultural Discord Engenders Cross Cultural Understanding.