2022 Teaching Award Honorees
Alumni Association Distinguished Professor
Andrea Alston Roberts, associate professor of commerce, McIntire School of Commerce
Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award
Amanda Gibson, assistant professor of biology, Arts & Sciences
All-University Teaching Awards
This cohort of esteemed teachers, whose awards are administered by the UVA Provost’s Office, was honored at a reception this week. (Public service award winners, also honored this week, will be featured in a separate UVA Today article.)
The instructors created exciting learning environments that helped their students not only think like a nurse, astrophysicist, evolutionary biologist, criminal lawyer, financial manager, or public intellectual, but also act like one in academic and other professional settings.
Several students mentioned that the teachers so inspired them, they decided to pursue the same or similar professions.
Among the many superlatives found in the awards nomination letters from students, fellow instructors, deans and other UVA community members, several themes recurred: how professors stressed empathy and ethics, showcased big data and advanced technology, and engaged learners, including with opportunities to collaborate.
“I tell people that being a professor is the best job in the world,” wrote Andrea Alston Roberts, associate professor of commerce, and she still feels that way “after 20 plus years of teaching, all the changes in academe, and a global pandemic.”
One of her reasons is having a positive impact on a young person’s life. “I am fully aware that this opportunity comes with great responsibility, and my teaching philosophy centers around that. Whenever I engage with a student, I consider myself a teacher, whether that engagement is in the classroom, during office hours, a mentor meeting, traveling abroad, or sharing a meal. My teaching philosophy is to create spaces where my students and I are learning partners, and we can learn and grow.”
In turn, students trust her whether they are graduate students or students from the Posse Foundation, for which she was a faculty mentor. The Posse Foundation program provides scholarships to a group of disadvantaged students and provides resources for all four years.
Roberts’ accounting courses attract a range of students from majors in the Commerce School to non-business students. Dean Nicole Thorne Jenkins and associate professor of accounting Adam Koch, who nominated her, said she is approachable and adapts to different learning strengths. For example, she gives untimed exams that emphasize learning the material rather than speed.
When the pandemic forced online and hybrid instruction, “she was at the forefront of our school in experimenting with online options” and increased her office hours to be more available, her nominators said, inspiring her colleagues to do the same.
