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For Immediate Release

Story Contact:

Kari Morgan: (307) 766-5111

 

 

Contact: Steven L. Miller, Senior Editor

Phone: (307) 766-6342

E-mail: slmiller@uwyo.edu

Archived News Site www.uwyo.edu/agadmin/news/news.htm

 

Date: June 9, 2006

UW assistant professor draws national teaching award

             “Amazing.”

            “Remarkable.”

            Kari Morgan, this year’s North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) Teaching Award recipient, draws superlatives like a magnet.

            The University of Wyoming assistant professor in the College of Agriculture’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) was presented the award in late April by Associate Dean Jim Wangberg, director of the college’s Office of Academic and Student Programs, and Professor Karen Williams, head of FCS.

            Each year, the college has the opportunity to award outstanding teaching awards to a graduate teaching assistant and to a teaching faculty member.

            “My office has the privilege of naming the awardees after receiving nominations from department heads. I was very pleased to recognize Kari Morgan this year for her exceptional teaching,” said Wangberg.

             Williams submitted the nomination.

            “She is exceptional,” said Williams of Morgan’s teaching. “Her senior teaching evaluations are amazing. She is such a positive instructor. She has single-handedly recruited students to this major.”

            Morgan is constantly searching for more and better strategies for teaching, and, noted Williams, “It’s fun to work with someone like that.”

            Morgan has been in front of classes for about five years and credits the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning on the UW campus and information gleaned at seminars for enhancing her teaching style.

            “It was a great honor that Jim and Karen think so highly of my teaching because they are excellent teachers, and what they think means a lot to me,” said Morgan. “A wonderful part is the e-mails I received from my students saying in their own way what learning in my class has meant to them.”

            Morgan received her bachelor’s degree in home economics from UW in 1991, her master’s degree in family and community studies in 1993 from the University of Maryland-College Park, and a doctorate in child and family studies in 1998 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

            She has a rapport with students, is organized, and uses techniques to break up classroom periods as a way to keep class attention, said Williams. “She uses a lot of active learning strategies, even in large-lecture format. That’s not easy to do.”

            Morgan utilizes “minute papers,” in which students have one minute to finish, and small-group discussions to focus and enhance student learning, keeps current on research, and provides meaningful feedback to students. She doesn’t hesitate to stop class to follow a question asked by students germane to the topic. Morgan said she usually finds a tie-in to the topic or, if not at that class period, in the next class or later in the semester.

            Morgan relies much less on lecture than when she first started teaching. “Plus, I try to have more activities to do in class that reinforce concepts,” she said. “I don’t have multiple choice exams. I have group exams or take-home exams or papers on the concepts. I try to get the students to take the concepts and apply them to real life situations and not just regurgitate them to me.”

            Students break into small groups and write minute papers on questions or topics that Morgan posts. “They seem to enjoy them, and it stimulates a higher level of discussion in the small groups,” she said.

            She makes learning student names, hometowns and majors an emphasis. “I try and visit with a couple of the students each day or when they are in small-group discussions,” she said.

            Teaching lower level classes, such as those with sophomores, contribute to students changing majors, Morgan noted.

             “I think a lot of the time I joke with them and introduce them to the field and to the department,” she said. “I say at the beginning of class that this is who we are. If you want to learn more, come see me. They will.”

            On the Web: http://www.uwyo.edu/FAMILY/Faculty/Morgan.htm

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