The University of Georgia Award for Excellence in Teaching recognizes exemplary instruction by teaching faculty at the University of Georgia. These teachers show the strong commitment to UGA’s teaching mission and the award recognizes the corps of teaching faculty that dedicate their time primarily to outstanding teaching endeavors, in and out of the classroom.
Maryann Gallagher is a senior lecturer in the School of Public and International Affairs’ Department of International Affairs and director of the Security Leadership Program. (Photo by Peter Frey/UGA)
Maryann Gallagher
Department of International Affairs
School of Public and International Affairs
Maryann Gallagher believes that engaged students learn more.
“In each of my courses, I strive to create an active-learning environment where students are challenged, scholarship is valued and critiqued, and theories are applied to current politics,” she said. “While the content of courses may differ, my objectives always include developing students’ analytical and critical thinking skills, improving their writing and verbal communication skills, and raising their awareness of the relationship between their personal decisions and international politics.”
Gallagher has cultivated new ways of engaging students since she joined the School of Public and International Affairs in 2014. In all her classes, she encourages curiosity and a willingness to share and learn from others.
One particular way she engages students is through research. She has mentored 27 students’ independent research projects through UGA’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) and spearheaded the launch of the SPIA Undergraduate Research Colloquium in 2019. Annually, the colloquium routinely features more than 75 research papers, poster sessions and panels.
Additionally, Gallagher leads the Center for International Trade and Security’s Richard B. Russell Security Leadership Program, a selective, yearlong learning community and pre-professional program for undergraduate students interested in careers in national and international security. She works closely with the students in each cohort as their instructor for the program’s foundational courses and mentors students, even long after they’ve graduated from UGA.
Gallagher seeks out learning opportunities for herself, too, all to help her create a strong learning environment. She has participated in the university’s Active Learning Summer Institute and the Generative AI for Teaching workshop and received a SPIA Active Learning Grant to participate in additional training.
“Whether asking us to connect current events to the day’s content or questioning us about our simulation-based experiential learning, she creates the most engaging classroom environment I had at UGA,” one former student wrote.
Gallagher’s fellow faculty members also appreciate her efforts to improve her students’ academic experience at the university.
“Dr. Gallagher’s ‘secret sauce’ as a pedagogue is to reflect and to revise — all for the sake of continual improvement,” one colleague wrote.
Allison Hale is a senior lecturer and director of the Academic Enhancement Program in the School of Law. (Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker/UGA)
Allison Hale
School of Law
Allison Hale teaches her students the way she would want to be taught if she were in their place.
“For me, that means giving them the tools they need to master the skills they have to master, instilling in them the confidence that they can do it, and treating them like I’d want to be treated if I were in their shoes,” she said. “I still clearly remember what it felt like to be a first-year law student, and that — more than anything else — has always driven how I teach and guide and relate to my students.”
That desire to help the law school’s newest students shows in her involvement with Early Start, a pre-orientation program designed to give students tools to help them manage the demands they are about to face. Hale has taught in the program since it began in 1994. Additionally, she teaches a popular series of workshops called “OneL” which she created to help students adapt to the unique academic demands of law school.
Her focus also extends to the Master in the Study of Law (MSL) students she teaches and advises. She infuses her MSL courses with content that, in addition to the substantive material, helps those students adjust to law study.
Hale has taught Legal Writing since joining the faculty in 1992. She fosters an atmosphere in her classroom that, unlike most of their doctrinal law classes, encourages students to relax a bit and ask questions, and she provides lots of examples and individualized feedback. She includes exercises and methods that resonate with different types of students, like demonstrating charting techniques for visual learners and having kinesthetic learners put a cut-up, physical copy of a legal analysis in the correct order.
In addition, to mimic the real-world scenario many students will face in their summer jobs, she requires individual conferences where she plays the role of a busy law firm partner and the student plays the associate reporting on their research and analysis.
“Professor Hale is a treasure of a professor — one who is an expert in her field but also genuinely cares about her students’ academic success and personal well-being,” a former student wrote.
Those efforts have not gone unnoticed by Hale’s fellow faculty members.
“She learns new things so she can teach in new ways, and she does it all with grace and good cheer,” noted one colleague.
