Anthropology Professor wins 2022 Noel Studio teaching award
Anthropology Professor Amanda Green and EKU Oral Historian Neil Kasiak were awarded the Noel Studio High-Impact Practice Teaching Award. This award is presented to an EKU faculty member who has implemented high-impact teaching practices. As defined by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), “the practices may include techniques and/or designs for teaching and learning that have proven to be beneficial for student engagement and successful learning among students from many backgrounds.” Many practices qualify under this category, and they generally share common traits such as: requiring considerable time and effort, facilitating learning outside of the classroom, requiring meaningful interactions with faculty and students, encouraging collaboration with diverse faculty and students, and providing frequent and substantive feedback (Kuh, 2008).
During the Spring 2021 semester, students in Medical Anthropology, ANT 377, participated in the new high impact practice assignment “Reflections: Pandemic Year One”. Students conducted oral history interviews with members of the eastern Kentucky community in order to document Covid-19’s impacts on EKU’s service region. This project was developed by Professor Green in collaboration with EKU Archivist Neil Kasiak and the William H. Berge Center for Oral History as part of the broader project “Navigating Uncertainty: Coronavirus 2020 Oral History Project.”
The pandemic significantly impacted individuals and communities across the globe, so the intention of this project was to use the lens of medical anthropology to consider the pandemic’s impacts beyond disease to its disparate impacts in eastern Kentucky. The unstated goal was to create opportunities to pursue meaningful high impact practices under the constraints of our new virtual learning space that would also follow Covid-19 safety protocols. The project also benefited students as it allowed them space and time to contemplate the ways social worlds drastically shifted with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Published on April 18, 2022