CLAS faculty earn college awards for teaching excellence

May 10, 2023
Categories: General News Tags: College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

For their exceptional teaching and student engagement, Paola Lopez-Duarte, Samantha Suptela and Lennin Caro are recipients of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences’ 2023 Excellence in Teaching Awards. Six other faculty were honored as finalists for the three awards.

Lopez-Duarte, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, received the Integration of Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award. Suptela, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, received the Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Lecturer. Caro, a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, earned the Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member.

The college recognized the honorees at an awards ceremony and reception May 3. Finalists who were honored are:

  • Loc Nguyen, mathematics and statistics, and Tina Shull, history, for the Integration of Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award
  • Jesse McKee, criminal justice and criminology; Erin Godly-Reynolds ’20 Ph.D., psychological science; and Scott Wilde, mathematics and statistics, for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Lecturer
  • Jane Walsh ’13, ’19 M.S., biological sciences: Outstanding Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member

About the award recipients

Paola Lopez-Duarte has made it her mission “to build inclusive research communities and make the process of scientific discovery accessible to all.” Lopez-Duarte develops undergraduate and graduate courses in marine ecology and marine sciences that help students build skills to think like a scientist through courses that integrate research methods, experimental design and data interpretation. She has implemented unique assessment methods and a highly interactive community of undergraduate students to dig into primary literature and various research methods.

Samantha Suptela ’03, ’12 Ph.D. joined the Charlotte faculty as a full-time lecturer in fall 2018 and is now an assistant teaching professor with expertise in immunology and microbiology, with research focused on host responses to bacterial infections of bone and brain cells and equity in STEM education. Along with her Charlotte degrees, Suptela earned a master’s in public health from the University of Virginia in 2013.

Lennin Caro, ’14, ’17 M.A., earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology from UNC Charlotte, focusing his graduate work on the different ways evangelical Christian groups at UNC Charlotte structure their outreach and mission programs to fellow students and more widely in the community. Caro is known for the sophistication of his analysis of field data using conceptual frameworks from anthropological work on religion and on economic culture.

Read the complete story on the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences website.

Pictured, left to right, Paola Lopez-Duarte, Lennin Caro, CLAS Interim Dean John Smail and Samantha Suptela.