2024 Exemplary Teaching Award
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Kristin Agius, Lecturer Faculty, English, LCA
A dedicated educator whose passion for promoting social justice and equity in the classroom. With fifteen years of experience teaching writing at SFSU, Professor Agius has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to supporting students from diverse backgrounds, including working-class, people of color, and immigrant communities. Her innovative approach to peer learning not only fosters a supportive learning environment but also empowers students to value their unique languages and experiences. Through deliberate practice and thoughtful feedback, Professor Agius works to that ensure that students have equal access to opportunities for growth and development, regardless of their background or circumstances. Her dedication to creating inclusive spaces where every student feels heard, seen, and valued exemplifies the transformative power of education in promoting social justice. Kristin Agius’s impact on students' lives is truly remarkable, and her receipt of this award is a recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching and learning.
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Yiwen Chen, Assistant Professor, Marketing, LFCOB
We also welcome the opportunity to celebrate Dr. Yiwen Chen for her leadership in social justice learning. As Dr. Chen wrote in her application, “I firmly believe that students learn by doing … I have been dedicated to creating engaging and inclusive learning experiences that empower students to succeed both academically and personally.” Subsequently, Dr. Chen has created strongly-mentored, deep, and meaningful community engagement projects. These projects have equipped her students with social justice lenses they otherwise may not have experienced. For example, students worked with a 76 Gas Station, a Latinx family-owned business, to explore the viability of introducing a new car wash service. Through this community engagement project, students’ work propelled the business to introduce both the car wash service as well as a loyalty program, and themselves learned the importance of appropriate incentives (such as offline vouchers instead of online gift cards), bilingual questionnaires, and other supports. We thank Dr. Chen for her innovations in active student learning.
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Stephanie Claussen, Assistant Professor, Engineering, COSE
An Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering. Since joining SFSU in January 2021, Dr. Claussen has demonstrated a remarkable commitment to enhancing the academic success and retention of low-income and first-generation engineering students through the development and implementation of a groundbreaking first-year engineering course, Introduction to Engineering (ENGR 100). Collaborating closely with the Metro College Success Program, Dr. Claussen has transformed Introduction to Engineering into a dynamic, community-engaged course centered around a semester-long, team-based design project. Emphasizing the cultivation of professional and student success skills such as technical communication, effective collaboration, and engineering ethics, Dr. Claussen has created a learning environment where students tackle real-world problems, with a focus on issues of social justice and community engagement. The artifact of teaching practice submitted with Dr. Claussen's application, an assignment requiring students to develop outreach materials addressing social justice or engineering ethics within their design projects, exemplifies their innovative and impactful approach to engineering education. Stephanie Claussen's dedication to fostering an inclusive and socially responsible learning experience for her students is truly commendable, and we thank her for her continued dedication to equity and excellence in teaching and learning.
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Ashmi Desai, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, LCA
We would like to congratulate Dr. Ashmi Desai for her contributions to student learning. As her application attests, Dr. Desai uses a dialogic pedagogy to forward storytelling and dialogue in small-group exercises centered on conflict. Focusing on the need for communicative understanding, her assignment “Hear me Talks” become a space for questioning assumptions, critical thinking, knowledge co-creation, and community building. Students are asked to take on the role of conflict resolvers, and become storytellers, validators, and questioners along the way. As Dr. Desai wrote in her application “During the Hear me talks activity, there are often tears, laughter, pregnant silences, endless questions and answers, but hardly a disinterested, disconnected or disrespectful moment.” We thank Dr. Desai for cultivating these spaces for student growth.
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Yikuan Lee, Associate Professor, International Business, LFCOB
Dr. Lee’s teaching approach is holistic: as she wrote in her application, she “feels a deep sense of responsibility for [her students’] well-being, striving not only to enhance their academic performance but also to cultivate their mental resilience and emotional intelligence.” One of her strengths is mindfulness training. Dr. Lee has also developed impactful experiential learning practices – for example by updating her department’s “Shark Tank Competition,” a live judged activity in which students pitch business plans to local business leaders. In 2022, Dr. Lee began incorporating a “sustainable innovation” theme, to emphasize the importance of environmental stewardship and social responsibility in entrepreneurship. In addition, Dr. Lee designed a role play activity, “Host/Solution/Critique” in which students collaboratively use the classroom to work out experiences they may encounter in future workplaces. We thank Dr. Lee for all her innovative, wide-spread support of students.
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Jingjing Qiu, Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry, COSE
An Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Over the past few years, Dr. Qiu has revised two upper-divisions chemistry courses to more fully engage active learning pedagogies to support student success. Dr. Qiu has participated in numerous professional learning opportunities through both CEETL and SEPAL, and she continually works to integrate powerful teaching strategies into her practice. As part of a three-year project, Dr. Qiu worked to implement active learning strategies including question-guided group discussions, low-stakes, group-supported formative assessments, and student surveys. She also invited colleagues into her teaching to complete structured observation protocols that helped her analyze and improve her practice. Her analysis showed a shift away from primarily didactic to more student-centered and interactive pedagogy. Her analysis indicated that students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation increased over the course of the semester when she implemented these changes. Dr. Qiu’s commitment to ongoing critical analysis of her practice to improve student experience and outcomes is a model of teacher-scholarship, and we thank her for her ongoing commitment to student-centered teaching.
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Amy Skonieczny, Professor, International Relations, LCA
Dr. Skonieczny's dedication and tireless efforts have significantly impacted student success, particularly among underrepresented Latinx students in both of International Relations’ undergraduate and graduate programs. As the graduate coordinator of the IR Department's Master's Degree program and the primary advisor since 2021, she has demonstrated exceptional leadership and commitment. Through her high-impact practices, such as assigning conference presentations and co-authoring papers with graduate students, Dr. Skonieczny has facilitated a remarkable increase in conference acceptances and publications for SFSU students. Dr. Skonieczny's compassionate advising efforts have transformed the lives of underrepresented students, providing them with clear pathways to graduate degrees and careers they may not have otherwise pursued. Additionally, her visionary service extends beyond the department, as she actively seeks to extend the Blended Scholars program to Latinx students in other departments, furthering her positive influence as a role model across the university. Today we recognize Amy Skonieczny's outstanding contributions and her exceptional service to the department, college, and university.
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Anusha Sundarrajan, Assistant Professor, Speech, Language & Hearing Science, GCOE
An Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Her research interests focus on understanding gender affirming voice care from a culturally responsive lens to develop patient centered outcomes and interventions. She brings this important research focus into her teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level through working to integrate more culturally responsive practices, including problem-based learning and service-learning, into her teaching. She also mentors students to actively engage in research and has supported undergraduate and graduate students to present research papers at the state and national level. Dr. Sundarrajan’s teaching and scholarship are deeply integrated, and her work to engage in trauma-informed, healing centered practices in the transgender community informs her work to train and support the next generation of speech, language, and hearing specialists.
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Jaclyn Wolf, Assistant Professor, Psychology, COSE
An Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. She has participated in many of CEETL’s professional learning programs and works to continually integrate new ideas from these into her teaching practice. In particular, she has developed an upper division course, Community Psychology, to emphasize a number of student-centered practices that reflects her students’ identities and experiences while also challenging them to think critically and disrupt the status quo within the field of psychology. She has developed assignments that use small group structures to increase participation and foster community; bridge theory and practice through a case study design; and take on difficulty topics regarding the harm the mental health field has perpetrated against minoritized populations, and challenging students to develop and adopt more supportive models of care. Dr. Wolf’s ongoing critical analysis of her own teaching is a model of practitioner scholarship, and we commend her ongoing work to support students in taking up challenging, important problems impacting the field of psychology.
The Exemplary Teaching awardees were honored at the 2024 CEETL Teaching Awards Ceremony on May 6th at 4:00-6:00 PM in LIB 121. At this event, the teaching stories video displayed above was premiered celebrating faculty who contributed their teaching stories. All who participated in CEETL's Spring Faculty Learning Communities and Workshops were recognized and awarded their certificates at this event.