Teaching Initiative Awards announced

Jennifer Barnes of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, Stephanie Gardiner-Walsh of the Department of Special Education, Daniel Lannin of the Department of Psychology, Sandra Osorio of the School of Teaching and Learning, and Livia Stone of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology will receive Teaching Initiative Awards at the Founders Day Convocation on February 21.

Additionally, Lisa Dooley of the Department of English will receive the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award for doctoral level, and Enrico Spada of the School of Theatre and Dance and Abby Iocca of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences for master’s levels.

Jennifer Barnes

Barnes is an assistant professor of food, nutrition, and dietetics in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. She earned a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences at the University of Illinois in 2013, followed by a postdoctoral research appointment in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. Barnes is also a registered dietitian. She teaches primarily upper undergraduate and graduate level courses in metabolism, medical nutrition therapy, and sports nutrition. Her research interests align closely with her courses, including investigations into lifestyle modifications and impact on chronic kidney disease, exercise and metabolic health, and eating patterns. Since joining Illinois State, she has served as chair or committee member for 16 master’s students in Family and Consumer Sciences and Kinesiology and Recreation. In addition to various service activities at the department, college, and university level, Barnes also volunteers on a weekly basis at the Bloomington Community Health Care Clinic where she counsels underserved patients.

Stephanie Gardiner-Walsh

Gardiner-Walsh is an assistant professor in the Special Education Department (SED). She earned a Ph.D. from University of North Carolina at Greensboro in May 2015 and started at Illinois State that August. Gardiner-Walsh teaches a variety of courses in SED, including deaf education courses and literacy courses. Her research and teaching interests include deaf education teacher preparation, the “marginalized middle” of deaf education, and the impact of communication access on child development. She is coordinator for the Sertoma Camp for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. She is also a member of the board of Hearing Charities of America. In her time at Illinois State, she has collaborated on the creation of new courses in deaf education and mentored multiple undergraduate teacher candidates and graduate teachers in independent studies and research projects. Gardiner-Walsh enjoys the challenge of meeting the needs of millennial learners through the integration of technology, problem solving skills, reflection, and collaborative partnerships.

Dan Lannin

Lannin is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. He earned a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Iowa State University. Lannin joined the faculty at Illinois State in 2016. Before becoming a professor, Lannin worked in the fields of the music, ministry, and improvisational comedy. He teaches undergraduate courses in introduction to psychology, personality, and a senior seminar course called The Psychology of Happiness. Lannin also teaches a graduate course in counseling theories and techniques for master’s students training to be psychotherapists. During the spring of 2019, he will teach an advanced honors seminar called the Psychology of Spontaneity, a course that teaches principles underlying improvisation, so students can learn how to improve performance in unscripted situations. His research and teaching interests focus on peoples’ personal values and enhancing their ability to live and work effectively, according to their most important values.

Sandra Osorio

Osorio is an assistant professor in Illinois State University’s School of Teaching and Learning. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 2013. Osorio teaches undergraduate courses in early childhood education, bilingual education, and English as a second language. Her research looks at the implementation of culturally sustaining pedagogies with emergent bilinguals. Culturally sustaining pedagogies put the dynamic community languages, valued practices, and knowledges of students of color at the center of the curriculum and practices implemented in the classroom. She focuses on how this could be done through multicultural literature. She also examines how to best prepare pre-service teachers to work with students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Osorio is passionate about connecting course curriculum to the outside world to better prepare future educators to adequately serve diverse students.

Livia Stone

Stone is an assistant professor of socio-cultural anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2012 and joined the faculty at Illinois State in 2013. Stone’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of social movements and cultural change throughout the Americas. She teaches courses dedicated to giving students skills they need to craft evidence-based critical analyses of culture, society, and politics. She is dedicated to the liberal arts tradition of building students’ comprehensive understanding of the world as people and citizens. As a result, she has a deep commitment to teaching and developing general education courses that are personally and politically meaningful to students. As a visual anthropologist, Stone creates and analyzes film as part of her research, incorporates filmmaking into her courses as a pedagogical tool, and believes in the power of film as a medium that can reach across political and cultural divides. Stone is dedicated to the idea of public universities being a resource for everyone in the community. She coordinates the Ethnographic Film Series which is a free, public educational series that presents films attempting to communicate across cultural divides.

Lisa Dooley

Dooley is a fifth year Ph.D. student in the Department of English. Specializing in rhetoric, composition, and technical communication, she teaches a variety of courses in the department. Driven by her commitment to social justice, Dooley’s scholarship is situated at the intersections of decolonial theory, disability theory, critical race theory, and assessment. Her research interests include decolonial rhetorics and disability rhetorics, biopower and biopolitics, and neoliberal assessment practices. Dooley has held several positions of leadership while at Illinois State, including terms as president and vice president of the Rhetoric Society. She has received recognition for teaching excellence, including the Ranta Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Ph.D. Candidate from the Department of English. Dooley’s steadfast commitment to socially just pedagogy guide her teaching practices and approaches to learning.

Enrico Spada

Spada is a graduate student in the MFA Directing Program in the School of Theatre and Dance. As a graduate assistant, he has taught classes in directing and acting. Spada has led teams of graduate and undergraduate student designers, actors, and technicians as the director of numerous productions including The Illusion, All’s Well That Ends Well, Kimberly Akimbo, and the fall 2018 semester’s musical, The Light in the Piazza. He is the recipient of the Roy Johnson Scholarship and the Eric R. Baber Fellowship. Spada received a bachelor’s degree in acting and theatre education from Emerson College in Boston. Outside of Illinois State, he is a freelance director and teaching artist, committed to engaging audiences and communities through bold storytelling and arresting theatrical experiences. He has directed at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, and serves as artistic director of Pittsfield Shakespeare in the Park, a free outdoor festival in Western Massachusetts, which Spada founded. As a teaching artist, he has directed in Shakespeare & Company’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare and other K-12 residencies for nine years.

Abby Iocca
Iocca is a dietetic intern and graduate student in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. She graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State. She was a graduate teaching assistant for the Family and Consumer Sciences class Food Science, in which she assisted students by helping them improve scientific writing skills and understanding objective and subjective data. Once Iocca becomes a registered dietitian, she hopes to continue teaching and supporting education by being a preceptor for future dietetic interns.