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Teaching Excellence Award
The Teaching Excellence Award is given by the Salt Lake Community College Foundation Board to recognize excellence in professional education at SLCC. Both full-time and adjunct faculty are eligible. The award reflects a cumulative body of teaching excellence rather than just a single year of exemplary work.
Jessica Robin Berryman
Assistant Professor/Department Coordinator, Biology
Ever since she began teaching at SLCC in 2014, students have consistently said they are big fans of the hands-on learning that Jessica Robin Berryman incorporates into her biology classes. The field trips, lab research, robust discussions, her sense of humor – there is a lot about Jessica’s classes that students like.
It’s with good reason that students year after year give Jessica glowing course evaluations. She has a “passion” for biology, and she loves learning about the natural world and sharing that knowledge with students. After earning her master’s in zoology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, she started her career in higher education by serving as a teaching assistant there for seven years. Currently, Jessica teaches six different classes at SLCC, each with an emphasis on providing undergraduate research experiences that she hopes will be life-changing for her students.
Jessica works to support her students by getting to know their individual goals and aspirations. Once her students have left SLCC, she strives to keep in touch and offers help when needed. Jessica says her compassion for students has grown through the years, knowing that many in her classes have jobs and families that must be put first. In response, she maintains a flexible learning environment that emphasizes retention, success and completion for each student. Jessica also works to buoy her students’ confidence. Frequently, she hears students doubt themselves when it comes to their own abilities to understand the sciences, so she makes it her goal to constantly battle against “imposter syndrome” by encouraging her students to recognize and “own” their accomplishments.
Jessica has increased equity in her classes by directing students to free online course materials and by using high impact practices like “flipped courses” that involve students completing readings at home and working to solve problems during class time. These types of approaches promote student participation and engagement. “My goal as a teacher is to provide equitable, supportive, empowering and engaging learning experiences,” Jessica said. “These experiences will ultimately prepare students to think critically, be active in their communities, be environmentally responsible citizens and give them the tools to creatively and knowledgeably address societal problems.”
Brett Terpstra
Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice
Real-world experience matters in the classroom, and Brett Terpstra draws on a lifetime of work to benefit his students at SLCC. Before he began teaching at the college, he was a special agent for the U.S. Department of Labor and an intelligence officer for the U.S. Marine Corps. Brett, who holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, also once taught students to fly helicopters in Salt Lake City. In 2013, he joined SLCC as an instructor in the Aviation Department and by 2017 he began teaching criminal justice courses at the college.
Brett believes that student learning is enhanced by connecting course materials to ongoing social events, and with police reform in the news lately he has taken the opportunity to connect concepts like “qualified immunity” to what he’s teaching in the classroom. “Many news articles either simplified the explanation of qualified immunity or left out important points,” he says. “Most of the course materials I use do not address this topic. I found a very helpful explanation online that I have shared with my students to help them have a better understanding, and I have used class discussions to help clarify misconceptions.”
When it comes to improving equity, diversity, inclusivity and student success, Brett has implemented many ideas, including allowing students to use his feedback and then resubmit work for higher grades. He also works with them through ungraded activities designed to help crystalize content in their minds.
Students who take a class from the “amazing” Brett say they seek him out for other courses in their major, praising him for making complicated concepts easier to understand and for his willingness to work closely with students so that all have the opportunity to achieve success. Said one student, “This, to me, is what learning should feel like.” His colleagues agree with his students, and they describe him as an “outstanding professor in every way,” including teaching, service and research and someone who helps other teachers in developing instruction techniques they use in classrooms.
Brett also embraces the use of technology to further his students’ learning experience, and he’s known for using the Padlet web application to post links to all the latest news articles that might be of use to a criminal justice student. “I once shared an article about proposed Utah legislation regarding new and modified criminal laws,” he says. “I gave students an overview of the proposed changes and let them know that, although this material would not be on a test, they could quickly and easily learn more about the proposed legislation by going to the app. Using technology in this way helps students stay informed on relevant issues in the field.”
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