English Professor Receives Top Teaching Award at UNC Charlotte

Margaret Morgan was selected Friday night as the 2008 recipient of the highest teaching honor bestowed by UNC Charlotte – the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence. Morgan, an associate professor of English, was chosen from a prestigious list of finalists for the honor, which was first awarded in 1968.

The other nominees for the award were:

• Louis Amato, professor of economics.
• Banita Brown, associate professor of chemistry.
• Michael Hudson, professor of biology.
• Zbigniew W. Ras, professor of computer science.

Morgan began her UNC Charlotte tenure as a lecturer in 1987 after completing a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition from Purdue University. She was promoted to assistant professor in 1989 and associate professor in 1995. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English are from Kean University and the University of Maryland, respectively.

Throughout her career, Morgan has worked to facilitate student learning. She championed efforts to improve the curriculum and teaching of freshman composition courses and implemented new placement procedures for students for whom English is a second language. She organized North Carolina and South Carolina writing administrators who now hold biannual meetings. Internationally, she collaborated with colleagues from Germany and Thailand to share information on writing instruction and student support and taught a writing workshop for elementary school teachers in a South African village.

“Dr. Morgan is knowledgeable about the subject she is teaching, and she makes sure that all her students understand what is expected of them,” one of her former students wrote. “On days that her students follow easily, she moves quickly; on days that her students are having trouble understanding, she slows down.. The thing that I like best about Dr. Morgan is the fact that she knows each one of her students by name and treats us all as individuals.”

A non-traditional student wrote Morgan was “quick to encourage and not afraid to tell it like it is. Her encouragement and guidance helped me to believe in myself, causing me to work harder at accomplishing my goals. I am uncertain if she realizes how much I appreciated her help. I’m also sure I’m not a special case. She appears to treat every student with the same respect and attention that I received from her.”

Morgan describes her work at UNC Charlotte succinctly, the same way she teaches her students how to write.

“I teach writing, not how to write stories, or poems or novels, but how to write technical proposals, instructions, arguments about whatever,” said Morgan. “I teach theories of technical communication and argumentation. Ultimately, because I believe in my heart that language is our soul and we cannot survive at any level (physically, emotionally, spiritually) without it..”

Chancellor Philip L. Dubois congratulated all the Bank of America Award finalists.

“While each of our finalists has a unique teaching style, all embrace the dynamic nature of the teacher-student interaction,” he said. “They foster dialogue in their classrooms, encourage their students to question, and expect to learn as much from their students as their students learn from them. They are leaders who know when to follow their student’s lead. Margaret was selected from a group of her colleagues who are truly some of our best and brightest faculty members.”

The five nominees were honored during the evening ceremony and gala attended by hundreds of UNC Charlotte faculty members and their guests, Friday, Sept. 19, at Founder’s Hall in the Bank of America Corporate Center. All the honorees drew strong praise from their students and peers at UNC Charlotte.