{"id":67291,"date":"2012-10-16T08:19:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T12:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=67291"},"modified":"2012-10-19T08:54:51","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T12:54:51","slug":"two-clas-professors-win-aaup-teaching-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/10\/two-clas-professors-win-aaup-teaching-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Two CLAS Professors Win AAUP Teaching Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Association of University Professors has awarded two CLAS professors its 2012 Excellence Awards in the field of teaching. Fabiana Cardetti in mathematics received a Teaching Promise award, and Pamela Bedore in English won a Teaching Innovation award.<\/p>\n

\"Fabiana<\/a>
Fabiana Cardetti of mathematics received a Teaching Promise award from the AAUP (Christine Buckley\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cardetti, associate professor and Teachers for a New Era associate director, came to UConn in 2002 as a post-doctoral fellow. While doing her research, she was asked to teach a course for students who want to become teachers. The main idea of the course? Teach them how to teach math.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best approach is to show people how to look at math the way mathematicians do,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want them to look at it with a mathematician\u2019s eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, says Cardetti, telling a student to move decimal places when multiplying will only make him memorize the rule. But to explain to him why that makes sense and how mathematicians realized that procedure is important.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rules are the least important thing,\u201d she says. \u201cIf Jimmy is thinking correctly, mathematically, but gets the wrong answer, then it\u2019s easy to tell him he\u2019s wrong. Then Jimmy feels like he\u2019s bad at math.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, taking a slow approach that emphasizes logical thinking has worked for Cardetti.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t the quickest student in school,\u201d she laughs. \u201cAnyone can learn math.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardetti says she doesn\u2019t remember ever seeing a college student who came into her class with anxieties about math leaving with those same anxieties. Part of the idea is to make the students confident that they can teach math to children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the ones who will be out there with our little ones,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cStruggling is part of the process,\u201d she adds. Her own 4-year-old son prefers writing and drawing much more than counting and math. \u201cThat struggle is necessary to understand who you are as a learner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assistant Professor of English Pam Bedore teaches the kind of classes that make your ears perk up: \u201cScience Fiction,\u201d \u201cDetective Fiction\u201d and even \u201cSteven King and Cultural Theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to have the foundational understanding of classic literature, like British<\/p>\n

\"Pamela<\/a>
Pamela Bedore of the English department won a Teaching Innovation award from the AAUP. (Photo courtesy of Pamela Bedore)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

and American literature,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I think that when you teach using texts that are easy to read, it makes it easier to bring in complicated literary theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

When reading classic literature, such as \u201cBeowulf\u201d or Goethe\u2019s \u201cFaust,\u201d Bedore says it\u2019s easy to spend a lot of time figuring out the story\u2019s content, leaving little time for analysis. But when reading popular fiction, she says, students already know they\u2019re interested in the material, and the plots are easy to follow.<\/p>\n

Bedore says that she loves reading and talking about books, so this approach is an ideal way to get students talking. She also brought in the HuskyCT network to assist students in their discussions. Sometimes she asks students to discuss a story online while they\u2019re in class, which can encourage the quieter students to join the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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In the fall, \u00a0there is a lot of interest in Bedore\u2019s vampire fiction class, thanks to the recent surge of vampire popular fiction and movies.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeath, sex, immortality and time\u2026those are some pretty heavy themes!\u201d She\u2019s looking forward to beginning with classic vampire fiction \u2013 Bram Stoker\u2019s \u201cDracula\u201d \u2013 and moving toward today\u2019s pop fiction for comparison. Much of her own research focuses on gender theory, so the class will explore how males and females interact and have evolved in the genre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that after my class, students will look around them at cultural works \u2013 books, movies, plays \u2013 and start thinking about how they work,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat are the narratives? How can it be seen as literature? I hope it will affect their perspective on culture down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awards for teaching promise and teaching innovation bode well for students enrolled in courses taught by these two gifted professors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":61371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-67291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 17:57:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67291"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67503,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67291\/revisions\/67503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/61371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67291"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=67291"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=67291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}