Trivedi and Kurz Goodwin honored with 2023 Gillings teaching assistant awards
April 19, 2023
Every year, the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health presents the Graduate Teaching Assistant (TA) Awards to recognize teaching assistants who inspire students; enhance student learning through creative, engaging and/or innovative teaching methods; support student success in the classroom; and facilitate student development as public health professionals.
Teaching assistants nominated for this award are students who are pursuing a graduate degree at the Gillings School and have served in a TA role during the current academic year. This year, the award comes with a $500 prize, intended to help advance their educational development in teaching.
The 2023 award winners are Purva Trivedi, graduate teaching assistant and Master of Public Health student in health equity, social justice and human rights (EQUITY/health behavior) and Celeste Kurz Goodwin, graduate teaching assistant and doctoral student in nutrition.
Purva Trivedi
Purva Trivedi
“Purva not only goes above and beyond in her teaching and reinforcing lecture content, but she does so in a way that centers an array of learning styles of her students. With a background in teaching from her three years as a high school teacher in Charlotte, Purva is exceptionally skilled at fostering a safe and equitable learning environment for students across identities and learning styles. Purva embodies cultural humility and an equity standpoint as she prioritizes ensuring the classroom is a safe environment for everyone to learn and be supported as students and as people. She truly centers equity and structures her lectures addressing content that students could respond to with discriminatory microaggressions from their unquestioned biases, to truly create a safe atmosphere and prevent harm coming to any of her students. She encourages her students’ growth in the classroom and takes the content a step further to encourage student growth as public health practitioners and as individuals.”
Celeste Kurz Goodwin
Celeste Kurz Goodwin
“Celeste truly cares about each of her students’ success. She makes an effort to get to know the interests and background of each student and provides us with resources to support our specific public health passions. By just connecting with us once per week on Friday mornings, Celeste valued her students’ perspectives and made us feel like we were growing and learning as public health students together. She taught us to ask good questions, work hard and collaborate effectively. At the core, Celeste is more than deserving of a teaching assistant award because she ascended beyond the expectations to just assist her students in our public health coursework. Celeste inspired her students to leave her class and continue to grow to be strong and curious in our futures as public health professionals.”
Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.
