We are pleased to announce the Teaching Academy Fellows for fall 2021: Kelly Kingsbury Brunetto, Ng'ang'a Muchiri, and Tyler White.
The initiative engages our faculty in local, national, and international conversations about essential issues in higher education; develops teaching expertise across the disciplines and at all levels of learning; and recognizes and rewards exceptional teachers. Fellows serve three-year terms, and new fellows are selected annually.
As an associate professor of practice of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Brunetto researches the intersection of language learning and theatre performance. She is interested in exploring student participation with the goal of identifying and promoting best practices that instructors can use to cultivate a participatory classroom environment, whether in person or online.
Brunetto is also the Basic Spanish Program Coordinator, responsible for course development, preparation, and implementation and the instruction and oversight of lecturers and graduate teaching assistants in Spanish 101-210.
Muchiri works back and forth between creative genres as an assistant professor in the Department of English. He designs courses in African literature, 20th century fiction, short stories, and Caribbean writers.
Muchiri's interests are in African and African diaspora literature written in Swahili, English, and French. and digital humanities.
He previously earned the Distinguished Teaching Award and Humanities Honors Faculty of the Year Award, both from the college.
As an associate professor of practice in the Department of Political Science, White specializes in international security, specifically nuclear policy and human security, and he has been awarded $68,000 in teaching-related grants.
He is director of the National Security Studies program and has worked with the Great Plains National Security Education Consortium (GPNSEC), an Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence (ICCAE) since 2011 as the Director of Academic Programs at the university.
White developed the National Security Studies (NSST) minor, worked with the university's Intelligence Community Scholars Program, and co-developed and ran a task-force style simulation for the ICCAE program in Washington, D.C.
