Nine faculty members win Teaching Innovation Awards

March 26, 2019

Students at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health voted earlier this month to select the School’s most innovative classroom teachers. The winners were announced March 25 at the eighth annual Teaching Innovation Awards ceremony.

On March 25, awards for innovative teaching were presented (l-r) to Dr. Seema Agrawal, Dr. Alexandra Lightfoot, Dr. Benjamin Mason Meier; Dr. Alyssa Mansfield Damon, Dr. Karin B. Yeatts, Dr. Dana Rice, Catherine Sullivan and Dr. Feng-Chang Lin. Not pictured: Dr. Mark Serre

Dr. Marc Serre

The 2019 ‘Celebrate Teaching!’ awardees are Seema Agrawal, EdD, clinical assistant professor of nutrition; Alexandra Lightfoot, EdD, assistant professor of health behavior and director of the Community Engagement, Partnerships and Technical Assistance Core at the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Benjamin Mason Meier, JD, PhD, associate professor of public policy and adjunct associate professor of health policy and management; Alyssa Mansfield Damon, PhD, assistant professor of health policy and management; Karin B. Yeatts, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology; Dana Rice, DrPH, assistant professor of public health leadership; Catherine Sullivan, MPH, assistant professor of maternal and child health and director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Initiative; Feng-Chang Lin, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics; and Marc Serre, PhD, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering and director of UNC’s Bayesian Maximum Entropy Lab.

First presented in February 2012, the Teaching Innovation Awards honor faculty members who students feel “improve the learning environment at the Gillings School by integrating new technologies, engaging students in interactive activities, employing creative assessment methods, and introducing and incorporating progressive curriculum ideas into the classroom.”

A $1,000 prize is intended to help the teachers’ educational development in teaching and learning.

Laura Linnan, ScD, professor of health behavior and senior associate dean for academic and student affairs at the Gillings School, presented the awards. As Linnan announced each recipient, she read glowing comments from their student nomination forms.

After the ceremony, some awardees took to Twitter, saying, “Honored and grateful to receive a 2019 Award for Teaching Excellence and Innovation from UNC Gillings and to be in great company working with such amazing students!” and “Teaching is my greatest contribution to healing this world — preparing my students to fight for a future of human rights in global health policy — and I am grateful to the Gillings School for this Teaching Innovation Award in health policy and management. Pushing ahead!”

Contact the Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@listserv.unc.edu.