Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award
Voting Deadline - January 31, 2025
Award Voting
Please read through the 2024 OAFA nominee profiles below and then vote for your choice.
2024 Nominee Bios
Learn more about the award and how to nominate your favorite adjunct for an award.
Elizabeth O. Doyle
Geology Adjunct, Northern Virginia Community College
Alexandria and Annandale, Virginia
Biography
Beth has taught Physical Geology and Historical Geology at NVCC and Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia over the past three decades. She has gone above and beyond, bringing hands-on learning experiences directly to her students. She also has maintained an active role in the geoscience community and is a role model for other instructors in the field. Beth was nominated by Laura Guertin, an Onboard Outreach Officer on the scientific research vessel JOIDES Resolution, whom she met through a Ship-to-Shore Connection. After learning about the program and several communications later, Beth applied for and was accepted as an Onboard Outreach Officer to sail on Expedition 400, off the coast of Northwest Greenland. In preparation for this opportunity, Beth visited Greenland at her own expense to connect with local educators, museums, and community leaders to promote the upcoming expedition. Laura writes, "While on the ship for two months, Beth wrote blog posts, posted on social media, and gave virtual tours" to students around the world. Beth continued her work by co-writing a mini grant to author an open access book on the process of science at sea and has written for the NAGT Newsletter and spoken at local colleges and high schools about her Greenland expedition experiences to inspire other educators.
Beth has been involved in the Geological Society of Washington as the Meeting Secretary and now as Council Secretary. Since she assumed the additional position as chair of social media in 2024, the Society has seen a 20% increase in followers. Beth has routinely been involved in geoscience education at the national and international level, while continuing to develop field experiences for her local geology programs at home. Her students have experienced being led on trips to Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry, and Washington, D.C., where geology guides human history. As Laura writes, "she is providing many opportunities for her students to learn about geology locally and globally."
How Elizabeth would use the award
Winning the yearly McGraw-Hill award and receiving the $1,000 stipend would directly benefit my Northern Virginia Community College students by providing them with invaluable hands-on experience using a seismograph. The stipend would nearly cover the cost of a Raspberry Shake, a small and portable seismograph, which I hope to purchase and am ready to integrate into my laboratory courses. This summer, I attended a four-day workshop at the Colorado School of Mines, where geology instructors from across the country learned to teach geophysical methods. During this intensive course, we practiced designing and leading labs using various instruments, including seismographs, and left us excited about incorporating more geophysics into our curricula. In my Physical Geology lab, students already compare seismograph data from external sources to locate earthquake epicenters, but many ask how the instruments work. The Raspberry Shake would allow them to explore this firsthand, enhancing their understanding of the earth's interior. I believe hands-on experience has a lasting impact that data alone cannot provide, and with this stipend, the possibilities for enriching the lab and classroom experience are, quite literally, seismic.
Savannah Reed
Adjunct Professor
Centralia College | Arts & Sciences
Biography
Savannah feels passionately about the power of online instruction and wants to ensure robust STEM classes are available to students who cannot attend classes on campus. Towards this end, she created the first fully online section of Survey of the Earth Sciences for Centralia last fall and has been teaching it ever since. Savannah strives to make the course engaging and relevant to all students. She elicits genuine student-faculty discourse from her online students by demonstrating her excitement for the course material, being accessible, and working with and accommodating students.
To help students connect with and learn material, Savannah created several new hands-on activities. These include determining viscosities of common household liquids in order to better understand volcanism, and making simple models with containers, rocks, and ice to determine effects of melting sea ice and glaciers on sea level. She monitors student perceptions with surveys and tweaks her curricula as needed. Savannah also serves as the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Association for Women Geoscientists, and recently gave a webinar to help other new geoscience professionals progress in their careers. A career in higher education is challenging as a military wife, but Savannah hopes to continue teaching geoscience, increase the accessibility of the geoscience curriculum, and even advance her own education.
How Savannah would use the award
Winning the yearly Outstanding Adjunct Award would be an honor. In a lot of ways, online education has historically been looked at as less than. Even I have been questioned about my online degree and how it is comparable to an in-person degree. Though they do have their differences, online education is a viable option for many people for a lot of different reasons and it still requires the same commitment and learning expectations. To me, winning this award would mean that an adjunct professor can teach online education and still be recognized as outstanding. I have a lot of passion for my courses and the ways I have been able to develop them for students to successfully learn. If awarded, I would use the stipend for professional development. I would like to take training on how to better develop courses for online learning. I would also like to broaden my professional knowledge into various subjects I am interested in. By doing this, I can open more opportunities to teach different types of courses and introduce more subjects into the online environment.
Dr. Joel Aquino
Geology Adjunct
University of Northern Georgia
Biography
Dr. Joel Aquino is a shining example of teaching excellence and dedication in geoscience at two-year colleges. His passion for geology is evident in every interaction with students and colleagues, sparking curiosity and enthusiasm. Beyond the classroom, he actively develops curricula to keep it relevant and engaging. He organizes several field trips per semester, deepening students' understanding of content, and he keeps up with advancements in geosciences to equip students for success. Joel has taught physical and historical geology, physical science, life and earth sciences, and physics for teachers during the past 17 years with University of Northern Georgia (UNG). This has been concurrent to his role as a full-time high school science teacher with experience teaching physics, physical science, environmental science, and earth systems. Joel has experience teaching entirely face-to-face, hybrid, and online formats during his over 30 years of teaching. He has collaborated with Dr. Katty Mobasher for a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded grant to train middle and high school earth science teachers. He has also collaborated with other UNG science professors which resulted in the team winning the 2019 UNG Presidential Innovation Award by creating science teaching totes.
Dr. Aquino further shares that in his 42 years as a professional geoscientist and educator, he saw his career evolving from being an Explorer of Mines to an Explorer of Minds. As an American by choice whose country of heritage is the Philippines, Joel's recent advocacy is to conduct a yearly science workshop for Filipino science teachers and seek to participate in a part-time faculty position at a Manila university to teach mineral deposits.
How Joel would use the award
First, I would like to thank NAGT for this Summer 2024 quarterly honoree award. This is a recognition for the many years of continuous pedagogical improvement in the face of evolving challenges to education. I would dedicate this win to my students and colleagues who always poke me to continually explore (Semper Exploro). As I wind down my career as a full-time HS educator, I will, however, continue my passion to teach introductory science courses in the tertiary level. Thus, the award money, together with my own financial resources, will serve two goals – one technical and the second, pedagogical. Since I have a mineral industry background, the technical aspect will be focused on how best to integrate artificial intelligence in the search of clean, sustainable energy and mineral resources. The path forward to a more technologically advanced civilization. The pedagogical goal is to continue my advocacy to teach middle and HS science teachers locally and in the Philippines. I have been doing this regularly every summer for 10 years. As I look back and look ahead, my career evolved from an Explorer of Mines to Explorer of Minds.