faculty recognized for excellence
Tue., Apr 29
The J. Philip Smith Outstanding Teaching Award Committee has completed the selection of award winners for 2008. The recipients of the 2008 awards are:
Full-time: Cynthia Stretch -- English Department
Part-time: Lois Church -- English Department
Cynthia Stretch,
Associate Professor of English
Dr. Cynthia Stretch (left) earned her teaching certification and Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Indiana University-Bloomington and her Master of Arts and Ph.D. in American literature and culture at the University of Iowa. This is her tenth year as a member of the English Department at Southern where she teaches first-year composition and general education literature, as well as 19th- and early 20th-century American literature courses for English majors and graduate students.
Dr. Stretch has earned the respect of students and colleagues for her classroom practices as well as her productive contributions to program development and global awareness initiatives. Earlier this year, the students and staff of the Disability Resource Center recognized her for her commitment to supporting the academic endeavors of students with disabilities. In fall 2005, Dr. Stretch was invited to be a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Barcelona in Spain. The experience underscored the values of global citizenship that inform her teaching of American literature as part of an international effort to grapple with tragedy and emerge with hope. This year Dr. Stretch wrote a successful Fulbright proposal to bring a colleague from the University of Barcelona to Southern to teach literature and women's studies. Dr. Cristina Alsina Rísquez will join the Southern faculty in fall 2008.
In this inaugural year of Southern's ambitious First-Year Experience program, Dr. Stretch was a leader in developing innovative course materials to meet the objectives of the program's seminar, FYE 101. She designed a series of case study assignments that engage students in scenarios in which they become "experts" who in turn teach their peers about particular aspects of academic and student support services. The assignments incorporate problem solving and metacognition in addition to sophisticated reading and writing components. Her willingness to share those materials with other instructors as well as her efforts to revise and improve them for the coming semesters demonstrate her long-standing interest in easing students' transition to college while maintaining high academic standards. As the primary academic adviser for her FYE 101 students, Dr. Stretch devotes considerable time to helping her advisees imagine their futures and strategize about meeting their goals at Southern and beyond. In her estimation, because it facilitates meaningful connections between in-coming students and the institution, the First-Year Experience program, in conjunction with the newly revised general education program, has the potential to revitalize teaching at all levels of the curriculum and to put Southern on the map as a fine example of what a regional university committed to educating the state's strivers can achieve.
Dr. Stretch lives, gardens, and keeps score for Little League in West Haven with her husband, Steve Mathews, and their son, Simon.
Lois Lake Church,
Adjunct Instructor of English
Lois Lake Church (right), adjunct instructor in the English department, received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English education from Syracuse University, and will receive her Master of Arts from Southern on May 22. She has been a high school English teacher, a GED and ESL instructor for adult education programs, an instructor of English, freshman seminar, mathematics, and oral communication at a junior college, and for many years was a home educator. At Southern, she teaches composition during the spring and fall terms, She also teaches English with the Connecticut College Access and Success (ConnCAS) program in the summer and tutors in the Campus Writing Center.
Ms. Church enrolled in the School of Graduate Studies Southern in the fall of 2005 as a graduate teaching assistant with Dr. Will Hochman. She subsequently won the Roger Blood Scholarship and a graduate assistantship, which enabled her to work with Prof. Nicole Henderson. She has also served as teaching assistant for Dr. Vara Neverow and Prof. Jeff Mock, and presented papers on the interface of technology and composition pedagogy at conferences in Connecticut, New York, and Texas.
Although her graduate degree concentration was in composition, her thesis, "Means of Grace," was a collection of short stories and poems. She won second place in the 2006 Southern Connecticut State University Short Fiction Contest and first place in the 2008 CSUS Essay Contest. She is also an invited reader at the annual Touchstone Poetry Festival and Artwalk and was invited to address the senior nurse-midwifery class at Columbia University. Her creative writing appears in Folio, Connecticut River Review, Broken Bridge Review, Thanatos, Varney's Nurse-Midwifery, Mourning Sickness, and Connecticut Review.
Ms. Church has been vice president and treasurer of the English Department Graduate Ensemble (EDGE) and reader for the Portfolio Assessment Committee. She is a member of the Graduate Student Affairs Committee and, in the English Department, the Bylaws and Peer Evaluation Committees. She is editor-in chief of Noctua Review: The Graduate Magazine of Literature and Art at Southern, the inaugural edition of which will appear in May. For years she edited columns and newsletters for the Connecticut Home Educators Association and nationally for the La Leche League, International. She was associate editor of the book "Whole Foods for the Whole Family" and has written and edited test preparation materials for The Princeton Review.
Off campus, Ms. Church sings with St. Andrew's Choir in Meriden and the Connecticut Gilbert and Sullivan Society in Middletown, annually performing an operetta in this troupe with her husband and daughters. Her daughter Julie, a senior at Southern, is Editor-in Chief of Folio, and her daughter Victoria, an Honors College junior, is currently performing as Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Southern's Crescent Players.
