Alison Ede
College of Education
Alison Ede’s enthusiasm for teaching and working with students is apparent to many. Students have described her as caring, enthusiastic, and engaged; one student noted that Ede’s “passion for her work was infectious.” Because most kinesiology undergraduates pursue careers in health- related fields, such as physical therapy, Ms. Ede took pride in helping them learn to apply their knowledge to the practical situations they will face in their future careers.
As a graduate student pursuing certification in college teaching, Ede was responsible for teaching five different lecture classes, including upper-level major classes, which are also Tier-II writing intensive courses, and basic foundations classes. In addition, Ede co-taught a graduate course, “Psychosocial Aspects of Physical Activity,” for two years with a kinesiology professor. Ede never hesitated to innovate in her teaching to help students master material fully. In one of her classes, she used a “flipped classroom” approach, requiring students to watch portions of lectures before class online, so she could spend more time holding active discussion during class. This approach allowed her to spend more time focusing on hands-on activities to demonstrate sport psychology theory as well as to explain theories students were discovering for the first time.
In addition to teaching multiple upper-level courses within the department, Ede has valued opportunities for learning outside of the classroom. As project manager of a study funded by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Deborah Feltz’s Exergames Research Laboratory, Ede mentored more than 40 undergraduate research assistants. Ms. Ede believes important learning experiences come not only from engaging directly in the research process but also in learning how to work with others in collaborative environments.
Ede’s core research concentration lies in the psychosocial aspects of sport and physical activity, with a particular focus in exercise psychology and public health. Specifically, she is interested in factors influencing motivation to exercise among adults in group and community settings, such as how interactions between group members can influence motivation to exercise. Since coming to MSU, she has added four publications in refereed journals to her CV and is lead author on a book chapter published in 2015 on applying group dynamics principles to active health games.
Stuart Chapman Hill
College of Music
When describing Stuart Chapman Hill, one student evoked the Maya Angelou quotation, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget what you made them feel.” Hill makes students feel valued and helps them develop the same passion for learning that he himself brings to the classroom. An expert song- writer, Mr. Hill teaches songwriting to both music majors and nonmajors. Aware of how intimidating sharing one’s art can be, Hill has created a safe environment for the students so that they are not afraid to share their compositions with one another and to provide honest, helpful feedback. In addition to teaching songwriting, he has served as a co-teacher of “Principles of Music Education” and as a teaching assistant in the “Ensemble Conducting and Student Teaching” seminar.
Prior to coming to MSU to pursue his Ph.D. in Music Education, Hill taught middle school choral music in Greensboro, North Carolina, where in 2013 he was recognized as his school’s teacher of the year. Whether he is teaching middle school students, preser- vice music teachers, or aspiring songwriters, he places his students at the center of the classroom experience. As one letter writer stated, “He believes deeply in the role of teacher as facilitator and models this negotiated and shared relationship of teacher and student with nuance and sensitivity.” Another noted, “He is focused on the growth of his students [and] committed to creating an environment in which his students thrive.” Hill’s scholarship ties directly to his work in the classroom. For his dissertation, he is studying the working processes of professional songwriters with an eye to how their processes can inform the work of K–12 music teachers. He has presented at multiple national conferences and has a co-authored article in press in the flagship music educa- tion journal, Journal of Research in Music Education. Hill has published one of his choral works and several other choral compositions and arrangements under contract with Hinshaw Music, Inc. As a member of the music team for the Michigan Arts Education Instruction and Assessment Project, he is providing valuable music education to Michigan students.
Eric Martin
College of Education
Eric Martin has a passion for teaching best illustrated, perhaps, through student comments. One student noted, “Eric had great enthusiasm for the course. You could tell he loved what he did, and he did it well.” Another commented on his teaching style, “[he] truly cared about our learning and engagement in class. Everything he planned reinforced material in a fun way.” In his teaching, Martin prioritized being approachable and engaging students in creative ways to ensure they understood the course material fully.
Martin taught a variety of lecture courses in the Department of Kinesiology that focused on measurement, research methods, sport psychology, and sport sociology. Regardless of class size, he connected to students using a variety of teaching methods focused on different students’ learning strengths. A student who was in two of Martin’s classes noted this flexibility in his teaching, stating, “It is important for a teacher to be able to adapt their teaching style to match each class, and Eric excelled in balancing the differences between the two classrooms.”
Martin engaged students outside of the classroom as research assistants. His proudest accomplishments at MSU include seeing one of his students present a project at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Fair and another receive a graduate assistantship from a prestigious master’s program. Martin has served as a representative for the Kinesiology Graduate Student Organization and several departmental committees. He was elected as a student representative for the Executive Board of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology.
Martin is a highly motivated scholar who has demonstrated considerable initiative during his graduate studies by leading multiple research projects. Interested in studying the development of passion and motivation in young athletes, he has published six peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters. His scholarly work is theoretically based and methodologically rigorous. His research skills are excellent. Martin has assisted Dr. Karin Pfeiffer with a project designed to increase physical activity in a nature-based program by designing a positive development curriculum to run parallel to the activity portions of the intervention.
Kathryn Meyers Emery
College of Social Science
Kathryn Meyers Emery is enthusiastic about archaeology, well versed in digital scholarship, and passionate about teaching. A student in her “Introduction to Archaeology” class described Kathryn Meyers Emery as a teacher: “she taught so well that I almost changed my major from physics to one related to archaeology.” Emery’s participation in the National Science Foundation funded FAST Fellows Program in the Graduate School, as well as her successful completion of the Certificate in Graduate Teaching, are additional evidence of her passion and effectiveness as a teacher.
Emery also teaches informally. Her workshop on creating digital identities has provided several hundred graduate students with the skills necessary to create their digital identities, knowledge of what can go wrong and how to fix it, and confidence that they can actually master the subject. Emery served as Campus Archaeologist and mentored many interns and fellows on digital archaeology, Geographic information system, how to use archives, and how to analyze artifacts. Additionally, Emery and a graduate student colleague in the Department of History developed ‘GradHacker’ for the daily ‘Inside Higher Education.’ Several times a week, graduate students from around the country contribute posts outlining a discovery (a technique, a piece of software) that helped their research, made them better teachers, or helped them through stressful times.
"Bones Don’t Lie" is Emery’s impressive blog. Several times each week, she posts on mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology (i.e. what we can learn from human bones in archaeological contexts). Her own research examines Anglo-Saxon mortuary practices in England. ‘Scientific American’ lists her blog among the top 100 science blogs.
Emery has several peer-reviewed archaeological publications, writes for several other blogs, is invited to present her research at conferences, and is an excellent mentor to students. Recently, a senior colleague from another major university was shocked to learn that Emery was a graduate student; he assumed from her publications and blog that she was a senior scholar.
Hannah Miller
College of Education
Hannah Miller lives to improve the lives of her students and colleagues, both within and outside the courses she teaches. She teaches science methods courses and mentors her graduate student colleagues with a combination of energy, enthusiasm, and self-discipline. As one of the students in her science methods course wrote, “Hannah was the best teacher I have had in college. So supportive, she cares about her students and their success.” She has been equally successful as a mentor to her fellow graduate students, helping to organize innovative courses, serving on practicum committees, and organizing a writing support group.
Miller came to MSU with a rich and varied background. She lived in China, where she taught science in both Mandarin and English at every grade level from kindergarten through high school for eight years. During that time, she also organized school gardens and other environmental initiatives, served as a newspaper columnist, and spoke out as a social and environmental activist and organizer. She is interested in and learns from the many different people with whom she works. She is a fine leader in part because she is such a good listener.
Miller demonstrated her creative, engaging, well-organized, and flexible teaching style when she co-taught a four-semester sequence of secondary science methods seminars with two faculty members. She taught the teacher candidates techniques for teaching science to English language learners by conducting a science lesson in Mandarin. She taught the lesson first in a traditional way, letting them experience what it is like to be in a classroom where the language of instruction is not their own. She then retaught the lesson, demonstrating more effective teaching techniques. Soon the students were participating actively in a lesson taught in an unfamiliar language, learning a little bit of Mandarin, a little bit of science, and a lot about how to make science accessible to English language learners.
Miller’s research interests are closely tied to her teaching—that is, they are based on her abiding interest in the role of science education in the broader context of our lives and of our obligations as citizens in a democratic society. She works with both science learners and science teachers as they cross the boundaries between formal education settings and other communities in which they participate. Her research is deeply original and brings new perspectives to science education.
Jennifer Royston
College of Arts and Letters
Jennifer Royston exemplifies the ideal of teacher–scholar. She has impressive publications both in pedagogical journals and in her research field, Early Modern English literature. She has taught a variety of courses in every conceivable platform— in-person, online, hybrid, Massive Open Online, and experiential (study abroad), while working towards a Certificate in College Teaching. She has served as the Teaching Coordinator for the English department, which supports all TAs in their development needs; and she has given teacher orientation presentations for the Graduate School, for international teaching assistants, and for the Departments of English and Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures. She has won fellowships for digital teaching, for pedagogical research at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, for doctoral study abroad, and for “Cultural Heritage Informatics” through MATRIX, an interdisciplinary digital humanities project at Michigan State. She even co-organized a conference on pedagogy at Michigan State, “The Humanities Classroom in the 21st Century,” which was well attended and well received.
Royston’s literary research focuses on relations between visual and textual representation within early modern English literature, especially in the theater and the court masque.
She makes an important connection between the professional dramatist and the rapidly rising status of the professional artist, considering how dramatic texts directly engage with problems of aesthetics and their relationship to artistic status. Her project engages with recent critical interest in visual culture more broadly, but her consideration of the relationship between the textual and visual helps open up the field to a multimedia perspective. In this way it connects nicely with more contemporary literary interest in graphic novels, film, digital forms, and other multimedia platforms. Theater and the masque, as Royston has observed, took advantage of multimedia possibilities in the establishment of a new venue for artistic expression and entertainment. The project promises to be an important intervention in early modern English literary and visual culture, and aesthetic theory and history in general.