Past Outstanding SL Faculty Award Recipients

2015: Sarah Becker

Sarah Becker was selected because of her outstanding record of scholarship in civic engagement that integrates research, teaching and service activities. The service-learning courses she teaches in Sociology and WGS feature reciprocal partnerships with the Baton Rouge Garden Alliance and Front Yard Bikes. Students enrolled in these courses work to empower area youth and to combat food desert issues while learning action research skills and enhancing their writing and communication skills. Becker wrote a successful $75,000 grant to the United States Department of Agriculture to build a new farmer’s market. A service-learning professor since she completed CCELL’s Service-Learning Faculty Scholars program in 2010, Becker is currently in the inaugural class of the Community Engaged Research Scholars Program, also offered through CCELL. The manuscript she created as part of this program was accepted without changes to the Journal of Teaching Sociology.

2014: Joyce Jackson

Joyce Marie Jackson was recognized for her long-term commitment to implementing service-learning in the Department of Geography & Anthropology. For many years, Jackson and students in her urban ethnography class have partnered with organizations in New Orleans, working alongside community members to collect and document history. Student projects have ranged from preserving Mardi Gras traditions to recreating personal histories lost during Hurricane Katrina. Jackson has published widely on her service-learning work and taught a service-learning course in Haiti during spring intersession 2014.

2013: Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell

This award recognizes Sulentic Dowell for her commitment to implementing service-learning in her education classes since 1999. Each semester, through a long-term partnership with Children’s Charter School, Sulentic Dowell’s students gain experience teaching in an urban setting while providing one-on-one assistance to first grade students struggling with reading and writing skills. The partnership goes beyond individualized tutoring, with the pre-service teachers also holding small group sessions, progress meetings with teachers and a final parent/child conference. Sulentic Dowell has published widely on her service-learning research and is a strong advocate for community engagement within her role at LSU.

2012: Carl Motsenbocker

Motsenbocker has implemented service-learning in his Horticulture classes since 2002. Motsenbocker’s students engage in various projects addressing food access and sustainability, including establishing and maintaining community and school gardens, developing green spaces, harvesting vegetables for use in community soup kitchens and assisting with a local farmers market. Students in his campus sustainability courses have implemented various projects to enhance LSU’s green initiatives, including campus composting, local food initiatives, bike share, education and outreach.

2011: Rick Moreland

Moreland has implemented service-learning in his English classes since 2001. His major contributions include the development of an English capstone course in which LSU students learn about the complexities of social problems and social change while working with a 10th-grade English classroom to encourage student expression through writing.

2010: Elaine Maccio

This award recognizes Maccio’s exceptional commitment to integrating quality service-learning activities into her social work graduate classes, her dissemination of related scholarship through extensive presentations and publications and her exemplar work as an engaged scholar in research, teaching and professional service. By engaging service-learning graduate students in advocacy efforts and community-engaged research for local LGBT advocacy and HIV/AIDS organizations, Maccio has deepened her students’ awareness of personal, interpersonal and institutional values and the influence of biases on discrimination.

2009: Marsha Cuddeback

Cuddeback has engaged her students in post-Katrina New Orleans rebuilding efforts, community outreach through the Office of Community Design and Development and community development work with Bethel Colony South.

2008: Judy Myhand

Myhand has involved her service-learning students in testing, preparing and publishing healthful recipes to be used by Food Bank clients and a Summer Experience agriculture and nutrition program for McKinley High students.

2007: Jean Rohloff

Rohloff has engaged her service-learning students in tutoring and in writing assignments, such as competitive grants that garner funds for area public schools.

2006: Edith Babin

Babin's Service-Learning English 2001 (Advanced Composition) and 3001 (Writing in the Arts and Social Sciences) students wrote biographies and memoirs for area senior citizens which become part of the T. Harry Williams Oral History Project.

2005: Jan Hondzinski

Hondzinski’s work in service-learning includes development of a course in Neuromotor Control of Human Movement where, as part of their coursework, LSU students prepare interactive lessons about neural topics for students in East Baton Rouge Parish schools. Students in Kinesiology 3517 identify neural topics on which the children will be tested, describe nervous system functions and create activities that describe these functions and disseminate information regarding neural function.

2004: Carol O’Neil

Under O'Neil's guidance, Community Nutrition students have been involved in numerous nutrition-related service-learning projects. One example of the projects her human ecology students participate in is "GUMBO." In this program, funded by The Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, LSU students teach community members about food preparation, food safety and nutrition to help prepare them for entry-level food service jobs.

2003: Sharon Andrews

In both poetry and composition classes, Andrews' innovative and ambitious “pedagogy of witness” has challenged students to confront difficult social issues through their reading, writing and community engagement.

2002: Leon Steele

Professor Steele’s design students produced a comprehensive plan for the restoration of the historical district of Bogalusa, worth over $300,000 to the community.