Breezy Taggart
Colleagues and students agree Breezy Taggart, the University of Wyoming’s associate dean of the Honors College, has a knack for interdisciplinary teaching and an ability to positively impact students.
Taggart’s qualities as a teacher include curiosity and passion; respect for her students; an ability to inspire students; and a commitment to mentorship that allows them to develop confidence and excel. These attributes factor into Taggart’s selection as one of 10 recipients honored with the 2026 John P. Ellbogen Meritorious Classroom Teaching Award at UW. The award was established in 1977 by businessman John P. “Jack” Ellbogen to “foster, encourage and reward excellence in classroom teaching at UW.”
“Breezy’s approach in designing her classes is unfailingly interdisciplinary: She brings together different realms of study, like medicine and art or art and the environment, to show how ideas depend on and enrich each other,” Honors College Dean Peter Parolin wrote in his nomination letter.
He also notes that Taggart builds classes that appeal to students, helping them learn and develop transferable skills in writing, thinking and communication, which will support them throughout their education.
“Of the many ways one can be an outstanding classroom teacher, Breezy embodies all of them,” wrote Mary Fenton, a UW English and Honors College professor emerita. “And having been a university professor and administrator for more than 40 years, I can attest that Breezy stands as one of the finest educators I have had the privilege of knowing.”
Across a variety of classes, in a variety of settings, Taggart has been a transformative teacher who has impacted the lives of her students, Parolin says.
Taggart’s classes include “Explorations in Medicine, Science, and Art,” a study-abroad course in Florence, Italy; first-year “Honors Colloquium I and II”; “Producing Knowledge: Analysis, Creativity and Expression”; “Art and the Natural World”; “Nineteenth-Century Art”; and “Photography and Paris: The History of the Camera and the City,” a study-abroad course in Paris, which will be offered this summer.
Taggart also mentors students in capstone projects and oversees a biannual Honors College magazine with her students, which has won the college’s national honors organization’s first prize for an outstanding college publication twice.
Ten of Taggart’s current and former students wrote in support of her receiving the Ellbogen Award. In these letters, Taggart’s positive impact includes an evident care for her students in and out of the classroom; an ability to thoroughly cover and connect a variety of topics; her ability to engage students; and a willingness to allow students to experiment with new ideas.
Zoe Hatzenbiler, a former student and pediatric resident physician at University of Texas Health at San Antonio, recalls Taggart’s “intellectually engaging and transformative learning experiences that challenge students to think critically and explore ideas across disciplines.”
“I enrolled in Dr. Taggart’s course, ‘Explorations in Medicine, Science and Art’ in Florence, Italy, which included a three-week study-abroad experience in Florence over winter break,” Hatzenbiler wrote. “This course demonstrated Dr. Taggart’s unique ability to bring together diverse disciplines in a way that made learning immersive, meaningful and intellectually transformative.”
This interdisciplinary course impacted Hatzenbiler beyond her undergraduate education -- it reinforced her desire to become a physician.
“In my time as a student at UW, I have been fortunate enough to learn from many dedicated and impactful instructors, but Breezy stands apart in a way that is hard to fully put into words,” wrote another student. “As this award is meant to recognize the instructor who most embodies what truly transformative teaching looks like, Breezy is the person who should receive it.”
Taggart holds a B.A. and M.A. in art history and curatorial stories from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in design, environment and the arts from Arizona State University.
