VSCS Faculty Fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year were awarded in April and two VSCS tenured faculty were recognized for outstanding accomplishments in teaching and learning: Dr. Gina Mireault and Dr. Christopher Boettcher.
Dr. Gina Mireault is a Professor of Psychology and Chair of the NVU-Johnson Psychology and Human Services department. Her work supports NVU’s academic Learning and Working Community vision by ensuring students are part of relevant applied-learning experiences. She involves students regularly as research assistants in her work and provides them with opportunities to travel to national conferences. The project for her fellowship will look into ways to expand opportunities for such learning experiences further by looking at how to better integrate NVU’s Learning and Working Community philosophy with the psychology program.
In addition to the fellowship, Dr. Mireault recently received a National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s grant of Support for Research Excellence. This is a prestigious, national $547,156 four-year research grant, and is to fund her proposed research on “Infants’ Understanding of Violations of Expectation: The Role of Social Agents and Repetition.”
Dr. Christopher Boettcher is a Professor of English and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Castleton University. He has been engaged in work to improve ways of teaching and in 2020, he became the inaugural director of Castleton’s Center for Teaching and Learning. He created and led workshops on online teaching that have been invaluable in pivoting online due to the pandemic. He has brought this experience and knowledge with him as he engages in transformation work on the Academic Operations core team and Teaching and Learning Innovation sub-team. His work mentoring faculty as well as students has been a great accomplishment and asset to Castleton and the rest of the VSC system, and will continue to be so during his fellowship.