2021  Dean's Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching

The Dean's Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching was created to demonstrate our appreciation of our adjunct faculty members' immense contributions to the teaching mission of the School.  Because many of our adjunct faculty continue to work in agencies and in private practices, we benefit from their ability to link our curriculum and coursework to the issues and concerns that they face daily in real world practice settings. This year’s award winner spends time mentoring and working with students, particularly with marginalized identities, to support them and their education and well-being.  This year she spent many hours working with a student experiencing discrimination and invalidation in many ways. She regularly reached out for support and guidance and provided countless hours supporting this student, as well as others. She consistently scores 5 out of 5 on evaluations completed by the students, and continually reaches out to faculty on ways to improve her teaching and teaching methods. She developed the course content for the transition to the fully online SW 874 course which any future adjuncts teaching this course will have the opportunity to utilize. We are extremely honored to announce this year’s award winner, Cassy Ainsworth. Congratulations and thank you for your continued support of the School and our social work students.