Janna Shedd Honored as Teaching Award Finalist

Janna Shedd of Religious Studies is one of three nominees for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Award the Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member. The other nominees are Lawrence Blydenburgh of Criminal Justice and Criminology and Allison Hutchcraft of English.

Janna Shedd is a part-time lecturer in the Religious Studies Department of the University of North Carolina Charlotte where she has been teaching since 2009. Janna completed her master’s degree at UNC Charlotte and her bachelor’s degree at UNC Asheville. Her research interests are South and East Asian religions, the effects of globalization on religion and culture, and multicultural education. For the last 18 months she has volunteered at a weekly community and educational outreach program for local Southeast Asian youth.

She has traveled to China for month-long excursions to religious sites across the country and was adopted by a monkey on her last trip three years ago. Shedd hopes to expand her travel destinations as well as the frequency of her trips in the future. Her goals for the next two years include publishing articles on teaching religion, leading a student tour group to Daoist sites in China, and expanding her scholarly expertise to include Japanese religions.

She earned her master’s degree in religious studies from UNC Charlotte in 2009 and has been a part-time lecturer with a 4-4 load since fall semester of that year. With her tremendous sense of initiative and imagination, she has developed courses, including an online version of Death and the Afterlife.

Students describe her as engaging, passionate and patient. They express appreciation for the way she shows them other ways of life that differ from their own, and how their respect for other cultures and choices grows through her example. She shows this respect in the classroom.

One student commented, “Professor Shedd was possibly one of the most impressive, intelligent and compelling professors I have had the good fortune of enjoying in five semsters. She was able to get even the most timid and quiet student engaged. Neither obscure nor fatuous questions seemed to slow her down, and if ever she did not know an answer, she always found it out for us.”