Outstanding Lecturer Award

The FCSM Outstanding Lecturer Award recognizes a lecturer for extraordinary excellence and dedication to student success, demonstrated by exemplary classroom teaching and the development of effective teaching methods and course materials.

This year’s award recipient began teaching at Towson University as an adjunct instructor in 2004 and was promoted to Lecturer in 2006.  Since, that time, she has provided exceptional instruction for many hundreds of undergraduate students in the Human Anatomy and Physiology (A & P) course series, reaching a diversity of majors within the health sciences and our college.  Student evaluations reveal her positive attitude and enthusiasm for teaching. As A & P classes emphasize integration of concepts and critical thinking ability, our awardee always welcomes students needing extra assistance and will work patiently with them, one-on-one, or by offering extra tutoring or review sessions, for as long as it takes for them to master the material.  Obviously, very often this exceeds normal office hours! Our recipient has incorporated a wide range of instructional techniques, including Panopto, and provides the students with a wealth of resources to aid with the learning process.  In the fall of 2019, our awardee began teaching a new course on Neurophysiology aimed at biology majors.

Our recipient is an active participant in the life and functioning of the biology department. In addition to helping students, our awardee is a team player who is always up for helping her colleagues.  This translates into providing informal mentoring and helpful tips to some A & P instructors teaching the courses for the first time, volunteering to help if additional coverage is required due to illness or bereavement, or helping to glue anatomical models back together to ensure that labs and lab exams run smoothly for the many instructors teaching A & P.

Our recipient participates regularly in departmental transfer advising and open houses, in addition to serving as faculty advisor for student clubs, including the TU-Pre-Optometry Club, Pre-Medical Club, and Global (Dental) Brigades.  In addition, she serves as Director of the college Pre-Professional Program Committee consisting of a body of 10 faculty members from several different departments (biology, chemistry, PAGS, and psychology).  As Director, our recipient and the committee, are responsible for interviewing students entertaining medical or dental career paths and writing their letters of recommendation.  In addition to serving as Director of this Committee, our awardee serves as the college Pre-Med-Pre-Dent advisor and provides invaluable advice to students regarding studying strategies, admission requirements, etc., and remains accessible to respond to students’ questions or concerns.  Our awardee is dedicated to implementing best practices pertaining to her duties in this role, so she attends meetings, maintains an active Pre-Professional Community Blackboard site, arranges for guest speaker visits, and tracks student success, as it pertains to participation and career outcomes for our pre-professional students.

Please, join me in offering congratulations to Dr. Laura Martin from the Department of Biological Sciences as our 2019 winner of the FCSM Outstanding Lecturer Award.

(As presented by Associate Dean Vonnie Shields at the Fisher College of Science and Mathematics Forum on December 5 2019.)