Eberly College announces Outstanding Teacher Award recipients
Morgantown, WV, February 26, 2006:The Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at WVU is pleased to recognize four outstanding professors-Dr. Cynthia Chalupa, Dr. Ken Martis, Dr. Katy Ryan, and Dr. Keith Weber- for their excellence in teaching. All four are recipients of the College’s Outstanding Teacher Award for 2007.
Cynthia Chalupa
Dr. Cynthia Chalupa, assistant professor of foreign languages, became interested in the German language as a young child, but felt that furthering her language education was an option beyond her reach. “It seemed that learning a language, studying and working abroad, were all dreams that I, as a first-generation college attendee, could not pursue,” she said.
Dr. Chalupa went on to make that dream, and many others, come true. She attended the University of Michigan for her undergraduate education, where the closeness of the German department and the personal interaction with professors and TAs influenced her to choose teaching as a career. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and German from the University of Michigan, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the Ohio State University.
Since her arrival at WVU as an Assistant Professor of German and Director of the Basic German Language Program in 2001, Dr. Chalupa has developed 14 new courses and instituted a study abroad program that integrates intensive immersion language study with a short-term internship at a German business. She continues to enjoy teaching and feels a close connection with her students, many of whom follow in her footsteps by majoring in German language and culture with the intent of using this knowledge in their future professional lives.
Ken Martis
As a professor of geography, Dr. Ken Martis, has used his love of maps, geography, and teaching to challenge his students to see their world differently. As an undergraduate education major at the University of Toledo, he imagined he would become a high school geography teacher, but after he went on to graduate school at San Diego State, Dr. Martis found that teaching at the college level was challenging and fulfilling.
Dr. Martis left graduate school in his fourth semester to report to the United States Army and served for two years as a Military Police Officer. “This experience made me an infinitely better teacher. At WVU, I teach my chosen field, political geography, to international studies majors and the credibility I bring to the classroom from being a former military officer is not lost on them.”
At WVU, Dr. Martis has served as Geography Undergraduate Program Director and he also created the Geography 199: Orientation to Geography course and the Geography 496: Senior Thesis Capstone Course. He was the first Geography Honors Advisor, a role he retains to this day. Dr. Martis has also given more than 100 students the opportunity to become involved with his research and writing, all of them credited by name in his articles and books.
Katy Ryan
Assistant Professor of English Katy Ryan has found that her students become more motivated when they spend their time actively engaged with course material. She often arranges special trips, performances, and guest speakers for her classes. “If she couldn’t bring us to the lesson, she brought the lesson to us,” wrote a former student.
Dr. Ryan came to WVU in 2000 after completing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has taught classes on contemporary American literature, African American literature, American drama, and prison literature, among others. The graduate prison literature class led to the creation of the Appalachian Prison Book Project, a student and community organization that sends books free of charge to women and men imprisoned in the region.
Dr. Ryan’s teaching and writing both focus on issues of social justice and human rights, which she hopes will be relevant to the personal and public lives of her students. “I want my courses to matter to my students… The English classroom can be a place where words and our interaction with words compel us to rethink what we know. I ask a great deal of students; perhaps most importantly, I ask them to take their intellectual lives seriously.”
Keith Weber
Dr. Keith Weber, associate professor of communication studies, began teaching as a doctoral student at WVU. His ambition was to teach a class on research methods, a course that had never been taught by a graduate student before. He persisted, serving as a teaching assistant for three years, until, in his last semester, he was rewarded with his very own section of research methods.
After graduation, Dr. Weber took an appointment at Marist College, but soon returned to his alma mater, where he has continued to inspire his students to pursue their careers with the same determination he did. “I know that every day in my chosen career as an analyst with a top-five consulting firm that I have Dr. Weber to thank for his excellent instruction on research and analytical methods,” writes a former student.
Since returning to WVU, Dr. Weber has taught courses in persuasion, commercial media, interpersonal communication, and mass media, among others. In 2002, his Advanced Research Methods class created a Public Service Announcement that received the CINE Golden Eagle and Telly Awards and was nominated for an EMMY.
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