The following is a list of the educators receiving the #iteachmsu Educator Award from Units that house educators beyond one college. For more information on these awards, check out the article entitled "#iteachmsu Educator Awards".
The Writing Center
Grace Pregent: Despite being new to MSU, Grace has already made a big difference at MSU. One of my advisees, a first-semester graduate student, worked under her supervision. Not only did he enjoy his work, but he got so much more than just a job and a pay check: he was welcomed into a positive, supportive, and encouraging community led by Grace and was mentored on much more than just how to do his job. Grace nudged him to present his work at a conference and gave him the confidence that he could actually do it. The student was experiencing a challenging phase of his life this semester, which could have easily sent him down into negativity land. But as he explained to me, it was Grace's ubiquitous and endless positivity, that became a bright light in his daily life at MSU, contributing to him successfully and confidently completing a difficult first semester.
Colton Wasitler: Colton has worked for The Writing Center @ MSU for many years with increasing levels of responsibility and commitment over time. He is the coordinator of our home base in Bessey Hall as well as our online satellite. Because of his work training consultants to conduct online sessions, we were well prepared to move our whole center online in this time of crisis. In addition, he worked tirelessly those first few days to get us going online and to make sure every consultant had the guidelines and resources they would need to function in this new environment. I truly appreciate his leadership, his mentorship of other consultants, and his good will and humor during all of it.
Center for Language teaching Advancement (CeLTA)
Elizabeth Ablan: Elizabeth joined our team in Fall 2019. Her primary duty was to assist with the Community Language School's (CLS) programming. She was very quick to understand what her responsibilities entailed and dived right into them. She's a very detailed-oriented person and makes sure that she does every task thoroughly and to the best of her ability. Her passion for language teaching and infectious collaborative spirit is very evident in her interactions with our teachers and volunteers. She often goes out of her way and beyond her duties to inculcate a sense of community in our unit by helping our student workers or anyone else in our unit that might need help. For instance, she initiated a discussion on how to keep our office fridge clean and organized. She took it upon herself to type up a chart explaining what needs to be stored on every shelf in the fridge. When we were planning a book sale of used books, she meticulously sorted all the book donations by language and organized them in our storage space. She has assisted multiple times with re-organizing our office space. She also streamlined the process for our professional development series and was very adept at understanding what protocols to follow with our invited speakers each week. Personally for me, she has been an enormous beam of support in running the Language School and managing all the administrative tasks so efficiently. Elizabeth's contribution to my team is tremendous! I appreciate her positivity, her work ethic and her attitude as a graduate student all while maintaining a full course load. A big 'thank you' for everything that you do!
Center for Statistical Training and Consulting (CSTAT)
Andrew Dennhardt: Andrew is a phenomenal research assistant for the Center for Statistical Training and Consulting (CSTAT). He provides excellent statistical collaboration and consultation services to our clients. Multiple clients have sent me unsolicited emails to tell me how valuable his help was to them in completing their research. They have praised his knowledge, communication skills, responsiveness, commitment, and professionalism. My own observations validate their comments. Andrew has excellent oral and written communication and collaboration skills. He listens carefully to people and thinks about what they say and how to respond. He respects the knowledge, expertise, perspective, and contributions that others bring to the table. Andrew sees the value in having stakeholders with diverse backgrounds coming together to jointly plan how to solve problems. I regularly give him clients who need help with rather complex research design and statistical analysis problems. He proposes feasible methods for rigorously addressing those problems, then helps the clients learn how to implement his suggestions and address other issues that come up along the way (e.g., identifying important constraints or aspects to situations that the client had not yet recognized were relevant). When Andrew hits the boundaries of his own knowledge, he starts searching for new resources and trying to expand those boundaries.
Bailey Scholars Program
Lorelei Blackburn: Lorelei is a BSP faculty fellow this year. She has had a very difficult section of ANR 210, but has done an excellent job stretching herself as the course convener to push the students to take ownership of their learning. You have helped to design a learning environment where students are able to build community and challenge ways of knowing. Bravo to you Lorelei!
The Graduate School
Melissa McDaniels: Melissa McDaniels is the best kind of Spartan educator, one who leaves MSU with a remarkable legacy of impact, touching not only those who were fortunate to work with her or be taught by her, but also those who benefit from her efforts behind the scenes to improve how teaching, learning, and mentoring are done at MSU. MSU Is grateful for her decade of service to teaching and learning! Anyone who has worked with Melissa has felt her impact, whether it has been in one of the workshops she's taught, in the orientations she has led, or in meetings where she advocates always for excellent teaching, learning, and mentoring. She is a skilled teacher and an effective policy maker, whose legacy at MSU will help ensure that future Spartans will benefit from teaching that is supported, valued, and celebrated. She is a national leader in supporting mentoring practices that honor people for their unique experiences, contributions, and aspirations and she leads with her beliefs: That everyone on our campus is capable of doing great things and that our individual uniqueness, put together, makes MSU an extraordinary place to learn, work, and grow. Thank you, Melissa, for your passion and dedication to learning. We are so grateful to have had you for as long as we did!
IT Services
Kevin Holtz: Kevin has provided in person support for some of most challenging teaching methods. He stepped up and configured and created guides for faculty to use classroom equipment in their offices and has provided critical in person support for lab courses.
Technology at MSU - Client Services
When MSU moved to remote teaching on March 11, the idea of "classroom support" changed instantly. Client Services staff helped faculty transition from the physical classroom to the virtual one through things like live lecture capture classrooms, providing streaming infrastructure for important information events, answering ever increasing numbers of service desk support calls and helping triage technical support across not only IT departments but campus as a whole. At every new challenge, they asked "how can we help?" By not only connecting faculty and students to the technology they needed to complete their work, but also supporting them as they learned an entirely new way of doing things.
Andrew Dennhardt, Aaron Algrim, Michael Sweet, Amin Elrashid, Ronald Southwick, Donald Morgan, Thong Hoang, Ronald Pranica, Dale Wegienka, John Hulbert, Linda Barrows, Kirk Bartling, Cindy Taphouse, Jeremy Jestila, Susan Dunn, Stephan Andre, Darius Bradley, Paul Phipps, Paul Sweitzer, Robin Ellsworth, Leo Sell, Sharron Wells, Angela Knauf, Cynthia Wallace, Joseph Murray, Mark Szymczak, Hao Quoc Lu, Dean Olson III, Blake House, Jeffrey Herrmann, William Balluff, Steven Jowett, Otty Turrentine, Jillene Pohl, Adell Flourry Jr., Victor Doe, Morene Dickman, Linda Beck, Wilson Ndovie, Stephen Asman, Shirl Rowley, Kimberly Davis, Laura Stevens, Terry Gillespie Jr., Lauri Stephens, Michael Walters, Stefan Ozminski, James Willson, Brandt Detmers, Timothy Skutt, Christopher Doerr, Robert Sisson II, Jonathan Schulz, Daniel Layne, Angela Kimmel, Charles Spagnuolo Jr, Chase Guzinski, Dustin Bacon, Renata Thompson, Angela Clum, Navidad Cassaday, Kathleen McGlynn, Melanie Phillips, Daniel Wyrembelski, Justin Baker, Aaron Richmond, Theodore Manko, Michael Snyder, Joseph Fromm, Chad Randall, Casey Jo Brassington, Elizabeth Hood, Bradley Williams, Scott Foreman, Jennifer Phillips, Michael Reed, Sean Will, Gordon Kiewiet, Erica Nedziwe, Jeniffer Robinson, Jeremy Gentges, Mark Seyka, Alexander Goff, Christopher Jones, Tonya Govereh, Kelly Wilcox, Michael Warner, Sean Collins, Matthew Evans, Brian Fraley, Erik Williams, John Sfreddo, Jacqueline Wilson, George Harris, Gabriel Cantu, Suporn Teng, Jane Carl, Sue Clark, Whitney Patterson, Paul Short, Thomas Marra, John Scott, David Sheppard, Karen Bailey, Jordan Stine, Gregory Forman, Ethan Begalka, Mohamed Abou Elseoud, Gregory Koerner, Chad Corkwell, Heather Atkinson, Alison Virag-McCann, Ronald Njau, Vinessa Webster, Kathryn Harger, Foster Whipple, Ryan Laorr, Claire Cowan, Bailee Droste, Jake Crandell, Madeline Smith, Benjamen Nienhouse, Lindsay Knuth, Anne Phillips, Joshua Hakes, John Nguyen-Tran, Amy Bransch, Allen Scheck, Mallory Crowner, Kyle Banks, Carlie Richardson, Dominic Colosimo, Jinny Bernotas, Hanna Foreman, Jeffrey Cunningham, Makenzie McDowell, Nicholas Hartman, Gregory Battley, Haley Rathkamp, Elsa Gallegos, Ryan Freemire, Tyler Michael, Rachel Macauley, Denzel Smith, Danie Gorentz, Jami Baker, Justin Walser, Jacob Tenney, Anslee Norris, Ryan Roberts, Wyatt Oistad, Anthony Rogers, Aaron Mundale, Eric Zhang, Jacob Garner, Daimon Emerick, Nickolas Battley, Jaison Balluff, Rachel Rumsey, Stephen Elmer, Kevin Holtz, Thomas Ruffley, David Littleton, Ian Walker, Robert McDonnell, Christopher Sibley, Elijah Corbin, Craig Smith, Madalyn Allen, David Palme, Joshua May, John Goodwin, Andrew Stine, Daniel Grusczynski, Brandon Mcsawby, Jared Utsunomiya, Devin Wilcox, John Senger, Sandros Rivera-Letcher, Brian Mitchell, Andrew Barnikow, Terrance Singleton, Clabe Hunt, Alaina Scheidel, Jacob Kingsley, Trent Keyton, Allem Mekonen, Eun Kyo Chung, Mary Catherine Canavan, Jolene Alto, Jillian Davis, Gabrielle-louise White Italia, Hillary Hemry, Dante Delorenzo, Randy Carnahan, Zoran Tomic-Bobas, Perry Truscon, Margaret Northcutt, Adithya Rao, Caitlin Parton, Lauren Gudritz, Tyler Coleman, Jeremy Balluff, Tyreece Banks, Sue Hurd, Dylan Mccarroll, Noah Luikart, Seth Swartout, Rostyslav Chen, Mary Magnotta, Jessica Knott, Devyn Boettcher, Dylan Hawthorne, Jonathan Miller, William Park, Braeden Berg, Derek Hamp, Joseph Roy, Quinn Sheppard, Alanna Bortle, Isaiah Orsborn, Brant Salinaz & Tabitha Hudson
Anyone can recognize a fellow Spartan for their contributions to MSU's teaching and learning mission or for how they made a lasting impression on your experience. All you have to do is click "Thank an Educator" in the left panel of iteach.msu.edu. From there you'll be directed to a form where you can enter the name, netID, and a short story of the educator you'd like to recognize.
