Kendra Jason is recipient of Bonnie E. Cone Early-Career Professorship in Teaching

Kendra Jason, associate professor of sociology, is this year’s recipient of the Bonnie E. Cone Early-Career Professorship in Teaching, which is awarded annually to a faculty member who has earned tenure within the last three years and who has demonstrated a commitment to teaching at the beginning of their academic career.

Jason aims to create a transformative learning environment for students where they can acquire skills to identify social statuses, ideologies and inequities and then develop social change strategies with immediate and long-term life applications. She challenges students to take the taken-for-granted and make it problematic, through questioning assumptions, framings, inclusions, emphases and exclusion where her overall goal is to make sociology relevant to students’ everyday lives.

Jason has chaired five master student projects, been capstone advisor to two students, and has served on four sociology master students’ committees and on the honor’s thesis undergraduate committee. She has played an active role in independent student learning by facilitating several internships and independent studies in the Sociology Department. She is currently serving as the inaugural executive fellow for strategic initiatives in UNC Charlotte’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.