Provost Awards Excellence in Teaching and Community Engagement
The Provost Awards recognize faculty and academic units for exemplary work in teaching and community engagement. This is vital to UNC Charlotte’s mission to prepare students for chosen careers and to address community needs in the Charlotte region.
The Department of Africana Studies is this year’s recipient of the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for its collective dedication to high-quality teaching and improvements to student learning and outcomes that have resulted in increased interest in the major and minor. Faculty in this department have consistently applied the department’s three main tenets of voice, action and community across varied classroom experiences and department-sponsored events. In addition, the department provides a curriculum that is responsive to the needs of their students ranging from flexible course schedules to varying modes of instruction (online, hybrid and face-to-face). Faculty are recognized for engaging students through various methods including research experiences embedded within courses; faculty-mentored research through the honors program or other university-wide research programs; active dissemination of research by students; and project-based, service-learning, or internship experiences.
Joanne Carman is awarded the Bonnie E. Cone Professorship in Civic Engagement for her ongoing commitment to civic involvement that has positively impacted the university’s relationship with the community. Carman is a core faculty member in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program and has served as coordinator for Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management for 15 years. Over the course of her career, Carman has worked with dozens of public agencies and nonprofit organizations in the Charlotte area and beyond. The overarching goal of her research and evaluation is to improve the way public and nonprofit services are provided.
She engages her students in community-based research that responds to specific community needs. She designs and oversees each experience to ensure it is productive and valuable for both student researcher and community partner. Her work with the nonprofit sector is highly regarded as she works with them to design evaluations that help organizations make meaningful program improvements and demonstrate the value of services.
Jeanette Bennett is awarded the Bonnie E. Cone Early Career Professorship for Teaching in recognition of her strong commitment to teaching, advising and mentoring. The award goes to a member of faculty who has been awarded tenure within the last three years. Bennett is known for being a student-centric teacher and mentor and for bringing innovation into the classroom. Currently, she chairs the Department of Psychological Science Student Learning Outcomes Committee where she has improved the assessment process. She also developed a workshop for the Center for Teaching and Learning titled “Logically Teaching with Empathy: Using Emotionally Intelligent Techniques in the Classroom.”
She is receptive and responsive to the unique needs of students. Recognizing that students in the Research Methods II required course have different interests and strengths, she developed two tracks — a high-challenge track for students with a strong interest in research and a high-support track for students who have less experience with quantitative research. Dedicated to the success of both her undergraduate and graduate students, her mentoring is resulting in research accomplishments for her students including peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, conference presentations and pre-doctoral grant submissions.