Excellence in Teaching, 2014
Education
Suzanne Graham teaches courses about which students often express fear: quantitative methods courses in the doctoral program in Education. Students may cite math anxiety or say they are just not comfortable with quantitative work, but Professor Graham helps students overcome those fears by providing an environment that supports learning both conceptually and emotionally. As she likes to say, she makes it real: posing real research questions and using real data to answer those questions. Students learn that quantitative methods are relevant, even indispensable, to their work and, in some cases, to other areas of their lives.
One of Professor Graham's students told her that she had used course material during a conversation with a friend and classmate about that friend's recent date. The student applied research design concepts such as treatment/control groups, validity, reliability, sample size, and generalizability. Her friend asked incredulously, "Did you really just analyze my date based on our stats class?"
By all measures, Professor Graham is highly effective at helping students gain confidence and competence in quantitative methods. They consistently praise her patience, attentive feedback, and the way she positively engages them in thinking about methods, design, and analysis. In the eight courses she has taught in the last four years, her scores on Question 14 (overall rating of instructor) have averaged 4.87, and in six of those courses, she received a perfect 5.0.
By: Kenneth Fuld, Dean, College of Liberal Arts
About this Award
Each year, the University selects a small number of its outstanding faculty for special recognition of their achievements in teaching, scholarship, and service. Awards for Excellence in Teaching are given in each college and school, and University-wide awards recognize public service, research, teaching, and engagement.
