Stuckey and Poole Named Outstanding TAs

Two WP nominees have been awarded 2011 Outstanding Teaching Assistant awards. The award recognizes teaching assistants who demonstrate excellence in significant instructional capacities. Selection for the Outstanding TA award is made by a university-wide committee of faculty recognized for their teaching excellence, and is given to approximately the top 4% of all TAs campus wide.

Zosha Stuckey

Congratulations to Zosha Stuckey, who recently successfully defended her dissertation in the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program, for being awarded a 2011 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. In her nomination letter, Writing Program Director and Chair, Eileen Schell, writes,

Zosha is a very gifted teacher . . . . As her teaching mentor, I have had the opportunity to visit three of her classes—WRT 307 Professional Writing, WRT 205 Critical Research, and WRT 105, our introductory writing course. Across all of these classes, I have been favorably impressed with Zosha’s overall teaching demeanor, her class planning, and the excitement and rapport she generates with her students. 

Zosha also has been involved in the service learning initiative in our department and has facilitated a number of productive connections between her courses and community agencies and non-profit organizations working with disabled populations . . . . She also has worked extensively with a local campus group, the Beyond Compliance Coordinating Committee (BCCC) to make the Syracuse University campus more accessible through the application of universal design principles.  Her community engagement work brought her the Chancellor's Award for Community & Public Engagement in 2009 for her work connecting disability communities with undergraduate students via oral histories and advocacy writing.

Regarding her award, Zosha said, "I owe my teaching accomplishments to Eileen, Lois, and the nature of service learning that allows me to make connections with local communities."

Congratulations to Megan Poole, a second year MA student in English, who is currently completing her fourth semester teaching in the Writing Program, for being awarded a 2011 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.

In her nominating letter, Teacher Training Coordinator, Anne Fitzsimmons wrote,

I, like others in the Writing Program, have grown to appreciate and value her genuine and profoundly thoughtful commitment to teaching and instructional design. In only three semesters of undergraduate teaching Megan has demonstrated sustained excellence in the classroom, and she has contributed in numerous and meaningful ways to Program conversations about curriculum.

Megan is very knowledgeable about the course inquiry, and speaks with great authority about the content of the assigned readings, but she devotes significant time and energy to helping students understand what is expected of them as writers in the academy, and how to deploy new and important writing strategies. Megan does an incredible job delivering a challenging curriculum to her students.

Fitzsimmons adds, "That is an extraordinary record of teaching success for any teacher, and particularly so for a graduate student new to the profession."

Of her award, Megan says, "I'm very thankful for this award and for my TA advisor, Anne Fitzsimmons, for her support and nomination. Being a TA for the Writing Program has shown me that being an educator is my path in life. "

Megan Poole