Two OHIO faculty members featured in Ohio Magazine’s ‘Excellence in Education’ issue

undefinedJodie Foster is an associate lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biological Sciences and the recipient of this year’s Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.  “I am honored to be featured in the magazine,” Dr. Foster said upon learning of her inclusion in the “Excellence in Education” issue. “All I try to accomplish is doing a good job teaching. To be rewarded and recognized for a job well done is sort of the icing on the cake. The best reward is always the students succeeding in their chosen career and becoming passionate about the class material.”  Dr. Foster’s professional background is a combination art and medicine. She began her career with an art degree, working for her own graphic design company before deciding to pursue a career as a physical therapist. It was her background in art and her ability to equate the human body to an art form that offered her a different perspective in appreciating the human body and the cadaver. Her belief that science is a highly creative field that creates a more rounded approach to critical thinking eventually led her to teaching in higher education. As an educator, Dr. Foster’s approach to teaching revolves around talking to her students, demonstrating the type of respect she would expect out of her students while working in their chosen healthcare field. She said sometimes there will be 20 students in her office studying during her office hours, a time when she hopes to foster conversation between herself and many students. “I’m a big believer in talking with students. ‘What worked for you? What didn’t work?’ It’s a continual reflection on what will make the course better each year,” Dr. Foster said. It is Dr. Foster’s dedication to her teaching mission and her students that was noted in her nomination for Ohio Magazine’s “Excellence in Education” issue. “She considers her job complete when she has sold her students not just on the value of learning anatomy and physiology, but also that academics is an exciting, in-depth choice that can lead to career success,” OHIO’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost wrote in nominating Dr. Foster for the honor. “Her tireless dedication to her students is extraordinary. She has elevated course content and rigor and yet receives terrific student evaluations.” Dr. Foster teaches an introductory course on anatomy and physiology, instructing several hundred students each year. Three years ago, in an effort to help her students better understand the material, Dr. Foster converted her personal lab in Irvine Hall into a teaching lab. The lab houses two cadavers that Dr. Foster opens herself, dissecting the skin and musculature to allow her students to actually see the anatomy they are studying. She will be receiving a new cadaver in the next month and plans to let her students help her in preparing the body for teaching purposes. “I grew so much as a person in college, and we know that the brain is malleable at this age. To be able to be a critical part of somebody’s life for a year and to help them make decisions about their career is very powerful. I take that job extremely seriously,” Dr. Foster said, noting the support she’s received over the years from various chairs of her department.

undefinedBrittany Peterson is an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies, the director of e-learning for the Scripps College of Communication and the recipient of this year’s Presidential Teacher Award. “I feel very excited and surprised. It is a great honor,” Dr. Peterson said of being selected for the magazine. “It’s really unexpected, and I’m grateful I was chosen. I love my job. I love teaching, I love being here. It’s exciting to be recognized for what I love to do.” Dr. Peterson’s research includes examining voluntary and involuntary forms of membership, and she conducts her work in local nonprofit volunteer organizations and in correctional facilities.  Her most recent research project involved a case study on Good Works Inc., an Athens-based non-profit organization that seeks to address the needs of those struggling with homelessness and poverty in the Appalachian region. Dr. Peterson spent a year and a half collecting data on Good Works, attending its meetings and interviewing staff in hopes of understanding its practices of communication within the organization and its relation to the broader community. Looking ahead, Dr. Peterson is hoping to launch a project studying a prison nursery in Marysville, Ohio. The nursery allows female inmates to have their child while in prison up until the child is 3 years old. Dr. Peterson teaches a senior capstone course in communication that explores voluntary and involuntary membership. The students in that course visit local nonprofits like Passion Works and are also provided the opportunity to visit two prisons that operate in fundamentally different ways – the community-based SEPTA Correctional Facility in Nelsonville, Ohio, and the minimum/medium-security Southeastern Correctional Institution prison in Lancaster, Ohio. The facilities exemplify a non-traditional and a traditional form of incarceration, and students are able to ask questions and learn about inmates’ experiences in the prison system. One of Dr. Peterson’s proudest moments, she explained, came this past fall semester when the majority of her students opted to stay at SEPTA beyond the required class time and continue conversations with the inmates. Dr. Peterson said she enjoyed witnessing her students embrace an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation with individuals who have had very different life experiences than they have.  “My goal when I go into a classroom is not to change students’ minds about things,” Dr. Peterson said. “I want for them to interrogate what it is they believe, and then think really deeply about why they believe it and what that then means for how they behave and interact with the world around them.”  It is Dr. Peterson’s work with students, coupled with her published work and the numerous awards that she has received, that helped earn her the recognition in Ohio Magazine. “Dr. Peterson considers learning a lifelong endeavor for both her students and herself,” OHIO’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost wrote in nominating Dr. Peterson for inclusion in the “Excellence in Education” issue. “She notes that her students have taught her to be better, to dig deeper, to inspire more passionately, and to commit to them more fiercely every single day she steps through doors as a professor.” Dr. Peterson said she enjoys working at Ohio University because of her ability to engage with local nonprofits and organizations that help her and her students co-learn within the Athens community. She also noted the flexibility that the University fosters in her approach to education. “I have amazing support from the school here to empower and equip me to do what it is that I want to do and do it well,” Dr. Peterson said. “I don’t feel that there are constraints or bounds on what I want and am able to do in the classroom to create a meaningful learning experience.” Peterson says. *** To see a complete list of Ohio educators featured in Ohio Magazine’s 2017 “Excellence in Education” issue, click here.