All lecturers, senior lecturers and other associated faculty who have taught undergraduate or graduate/professional courses in the last three years are eligible for this award.
Vondolee Delgado-Nixon
College of Optometry
What better way to teach optometry than through a visual teaching technique? Vondolee Delgado-Nixon developed an active technique that allows her students to “see” the learning objectives of each new topic by having them draw the dialogues and apply what they have learned to visualize the process. As a result, many of her students score higher than the national average for their first time taking the National Board of Optometry examinations. As one nominator wrote, “The performance on national boards is a factor that all applicants look at, and Ohio State is nationally known for its exceptional performance. Certainly Dr. Delgado-Nixon’s excellence in teaching is a major factor.”
Delgado-Nixon, who has been a lecturer in the college since 2001, now teaches the entire first year pathophysiology curriculum and also developed and serves as the course instructor for two online courses. Common feedback from her students highlights how organized her course material is and how enthusiastic and accessible she is as a teacher.
Delgado-Nixon also is dedicated to improving the diversity of the college. She developed Improving Diversity in Optometric Careers, an intensive three-day residential program that introduces optometry to ethnically underrepresented minorities. She also advises the college’s student chapter of the National Optometric Association, which is dedicated to promoting recruitment of minority students into optometry. She earned her bachelor’s from Cornell College and her PhD from The Ohio State University.
Jennifer Patton
Department of English
Jennifer Patton has made a career of professional writing — building experience as a journalist and corporate copywriter and bringing that with her as a senior lecturer in the Department of English. Patton, who received her MFA from Ohio State in 2012, teaches writing-intensive courses, and her assignments aim to build her students’ portfolios and, over the course of a semester, examine numerous fields, including grant writing. According to one nominator, “Jenny teaches students to be meticulous copyeditors and grammar-sticklers; she coaches them to produce professional documents ranging from social media posts and wikiHow instructions to grant proposals, job application letters and interviews.”
Her teaching effectiveness is reflected in her consistently high SEI marks, and she received the 2013 Favorite Teacher Award from the Ohio State Athletic Association. Patton adapts her teaching skills to best accommodate the way her students learn. She provides gentle but constructive criticism to her students and works with them outside the classroom.
Also active in the department, Patton has facilitated discussions in the Buckeye Book Community and contributes to the professional writing minor. She has served two consecutive terms as associated faculty representative on the Executive Committee and is an Ohio State Writers’ Guild executive board member. She has volunteered to lead Buckeye Book discussion groups every year since 2010, and she currently volunteers with OhioReads and the Eli Pinney School Library.
Kristie Sigler
School of Communication
Kristie Sigler has a deep passion for communication and teaching. As course supervisor for Communication 2367 (Persuasive Communication), she oversees each section of the course, training other lecturers and graduate teaching assistants, but she also taught 24 sections over the last three years.
Sigler consistently receives the highest SEIs of all the lecturers who teach the course. “I have had many undergraduates tell me how much they enjoy her class and how much she challenged them to work hard and dig a little deeper for their grades,” a nominator wrote.
As a supervisor, Sigler wrote and received a $10,000 grant from the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching that focused on the training of graduate teaching assistants, including the development of a manual that provides extensive guidelines and practical advice for teaching Communication 2367.
In addition, Sigler is in the process of creating a Wiki for graduate teaching assistants that will include information for any course they might possibly teach for the school. The Wiki format will allow the graduate students to post their own materials in order to aid future generations of teaching assistants. Sigler also is working with two other instructors on a proposal for a continuing education course on public speaking for the Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Cancer Center.
Sigler earned her bachelor’s at Malone College and her master’s from Ohio State. She has taught in the School of Communication since 2010.
