Two OIBR Affiliates are 2018 UGA Honors and Award Winners
The 2018 First-Year Odyssey Teaching Award goes to Jamie Cooper, an OIBR Affiliate and an associate professor of food and nutrition in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. Dr. Cooper uses her research on reducing obesity to give her students a scientific framework for nutrition, along with skills and tools for healthy eating as part of her seminar Healthy Eating: Exploring Truths and Myths.
She also successfully engages her students in a meaningful way with scientific research and critical reading by having them use particular library resources to research and critique scientific articles.
The First-Year Odyssey Teaching Award recognizes outstanding instructors who have demonstrated creativity or innovation in instruction, connection of seminar content to the instructor’s research and incorporation of FYOS program goals into the seminar.
The 2018 Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award recipient is Jerry Shannon, an OIBR Affiliate and an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the geography department in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the financial planning, housing and consumer economics department of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Dr. Shannon, a 2015-2016 Service-Learning Fellow and past Lilly Teaching Fellow, developed and teaches a split-level geography service-learning course in Community Geographic Information Systems. In these courses, his students learn principles of undertaking and communicating geographic research, applying GIS and data visualization methods to real-world problems for local community partners including the Athens Wellbeing Project, the Clarke County School District’s local school governance teams, Community Connection of Northeast Georgia, and the Athens-Clarke County Police Department.
Shannon also has mentored undergraduate research through CURO, engaging students in learning about food insecurity, urban development and housing issues through community-requested GIS projects benefiting the Cobbham Historic District, the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing, Bike Athens and local food banks.
The Service-Learning Teaching Excellence award recognizes excellence in developing, implementing and sustaining academic service-learning opportunities for UGA students in domestic and/or international settings.