Everyday Teaching Awardees

December 2024 –  Jason Blomquist “Professor Blomquist facilitates a quality improvement assignment within his Nursing Leadership course. The project requires student groups to collaborate and assess, intervene, and evaluate project improvements. This collaboration extends to mentoring and guidance from the Administrative Leadership Team of the School of Nursing. Students and leaders interact to increase the likelihood of successful change management.”

December 2024 – Danielle Swerin “Danielle has served as a Lecturer in CJ for years. She currently teaches (a 4/4 load, plus summer classes) remotely. She is one of the most popular faculty in CJ. Students line-up for her classes. She is also closely involved in Dept. initiatives and activities, helps with student groups, etc.”

November 2024 – “Jan is always innovating and changing her classes. She works at empowering students to acknowledge their own role in learning. She expects her students to succeed and because her expectations are high her students rise to the challenge. She does this by creating a classroom where she integrates mindfulness and a whole student approach to her teaching. She is also on the cutting edge of technology and integrating it into her classes. She’s been an active user and explorer of AI. Two years ago she enrolled in the GIMM program and designed a computer game as she was seeking to enrich her classes with her use of technology.”

November 2024 – Mari Rice “Mari teaches environmental classes embedded in natural realities. She regularly includes service-learning projects into introduction and advanced courses. The projects make a significant difference in helping the students learn about environmental issues. For example, she challenged her students to create the “Tree Atlas” and she is working with students to build a dashboard for information about restoration information on trails in the Boise Foothills. Mari’s relentless pursuit of engagement makes her an incredibly effective educator.”

October 2024 – Jennifer Marsh “Jennifer leads and teaches an experiential learning project course for RN-BS Online Completion Track that allows students to complete a project impacting the community. She is a Clinical Associate Professor who has been a part of Boise State University since 2010. Through her guidance, students are able to be successful and learn the importance of population health through experience.”

October 2024 – Mike Lynott “Mike is particularly dedicated to student learning, applying a variety of active learning and classroom engagement techniques. More importantly though, he engages in self-reflection as a regular part of his teaching practice. If there was a part of the course where students seemed lost or unengaged, Mike zeroes in on that part for troubleshooting to see how to reimagine it.”

September 2024 – Marianne Hudson “During Fall 2023, Marianne received a faculty improvement leave from SPS. She used her fall semester to re-work and re-prep five of her undergrad classes. This included updating her class materials (inc new text books), her test banks, and lecture notes. Marianne is a dedicated Lecturer in Criminal Justice. She has taught in the Dept for years and is respected and beloved by her students.”

September 2024 – Peter Müllner “Peter has developed several successful collaborations for co-teaching with colleagues from (very) different disciplines on campus. He has expanded these beyond the classroom to develop multiple vertically-integrated projects as well. It’s hard to imagine a better model for how to bridge engineering and the humanities in ways that benefit the students and the instructors involved. Students’ comments from these courses show how powerful the interdisciplinary nature of these courses are on their lives”.

August 2024 – Emily Meredith “Emily is a very student-focused instructor. Over the last few years, she has redesigned her BIOL 191 course to incorporate group work and active learning to help students better understand the material. Also, she is dedicated to supporting students not just in her Biology courses but in all introductory Biology courses through her work in developing the Biology Learning Center.”

August 2024 – Nicole Molumby “Nicole spends copious, careful time with students in the BA degree to help set up internships and other BA projects. Her mentoring is steadfast, creative, and thorough.”

August 2024 – Marc Ruffinengo “Marc’s classes are among the most popular with our Criminal Justice students, and he teaches across the curriculum (from 100 level classes to the Senior Seminar capstone). Additionally, when we needed someone to step into a new class or cover our Internship class, Marc stepped forward. He is a team player.”

May 2024 – Daniel Fologea  “Completely dedicated to helping students succeed in STEM courses: undergrads, grad students, HS students.  He runs help sessions on his own time, and is passionate about active learning in his classes.  Provides students from multiple majors with mentored research opportunities.  He truly cares deeply about students’ understanding and success.”

May 2024 – Jillian Moroney “Jillian excels at connecting her students with the community. She works with partners to identify authentic problems and questions suited to students’ developing skillsets. Her preparation and guidance ensure that when students visit field sites they are confident and focused. Her students’ work based on community-engaged projects is always inspirational!”

May 2024 – Tyrin Stevenson “One of the aspects of Tyrin’s courses that students rave about is his innovative approaches to the dreaded Discussion Board. Tyrin constantly seeks to improve his teaching. He spent time thinking about his undergraduate experiences and what he and his fellow students talked about when it came to college classes. Discussion Boards were the most despised. So, he set out to fix this problem by rethinking how he utilized Discussion Boards in his courses. In this remodel, he required students to post more often and do more work than in ‘traditional’ Discussion Board posts, but it paid off. Students actually rave about Discussion Boards in his class – they love them.”

April 2024 – Franziska Borders “Franzi teaches German and is a Discussion Group Leader for 2 different sections of UF100. Franzi is constantly thinking about how to better the student experience, both in and outside of the classroom. She creates engaging experiences exploring identity and culture, often meets with students outside of class to help them with assignments, and helps students obtain resources on campus”.

April 2024 – Cody Coker “Cody is an excellent teacher and mentor. He is currently working with a former student on an independent project stemming from the class he taught that they were in. He helped the student apply for the COAS research grant. He is also working with students on a panel for the upcoming Northwest Communication Associations’ annual conference.  In general, students love him and flock to his classes because of his warm personality, engaged teaching style, and clear concern for student well-being”.

April 2024 – Luke Jones “Luke completely redesigned our MBA 531 – Design Thinking & Strategic Perspectives class. This is one of the first course in our Professional MBA program (evening MBA for working professional managers). He was exceptional. He brought in relevant guest speakers, coordinated a full consulting project and used hands-on methods to teach. Course evaluations were better than ever and it was evident he spent so much time working on this course! Impressive for any instructor, but especially for an adjunct working FT at Simplot.”

March 2024 – Megan Dardis-Kunz “is a model of what community concern and advocacy looks like for our students, with them often commenting on her passion and commitment to a high level of social justice advocacy in our profession. Professor Dardis-Kunz openly shares examples of her community work with our students, so they can see what we teach them ‘in action’; this modeling is imperative in our area of teaching.”

March 2024 – Anastasia Tracy “was not only given the ominous task when she started as new faculty at Boise State to take the Diagnostic Medical Sonography (DMS) program over as the new program director, but also move the academic and laboratory experiences online. Ms. Tracy has not only successfully accomplished this once considered impossible feat, but has now had the new method of delivery via Boise State’s DMS program approved as the first JRCDMS/CAAHEP accredited online BS DMS program in the United States.”

February 2024 – Jayson Gill “is really good at engaging students of all levels. In his Intro to Archaeology class (mostly non-majors), he integrates hands-on activities that get students interacting with each other and prompts them to think like an archaeologist. In his upper-division courses, he holds class discussions that allow students to simply have a conversation together about the material, and they feel comfortable doing so because Jayson provides a laid-back, low-pressure environment where students feel comfortable. […] Overall, Jayson is very dedicated and wants the best for all of his students, and it shows”.

February 2024 – Ashley Nichols “goes above and beyond as not only a faculty member, but our program lead. She is personable in her teaching style, and models the behaviors she is trying to teach. One semester, after asking the students what they needed to succeed in her class and learning that they all felt really hungry during that course period, she started bringing snacks to class for them. When I have gone to her for help with my own students, she goes out of her way to find me/my students resources that they need. She moved our online learning program to OER text only and is a big advocate for economic accessibility for our students”.