Two University of Georgia faculty members have been recognized by the Office of Service-Learning with Service-Learning Excellence Awards in 2024. These awards recognize faculty for outstanding service-learning instruction and for advancing service-learning scholarship. Since 2011, more than 30 UGA faculty have received these awards.
Caroline Young – Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award
ENGL 3851S – The Prison Writing Project
Caroline Young, lecturer with the Department of English in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has evolved her English service-learning course, “The Prison Writing Project,” into a life-changing experience for her students. For this course, Young formed collaborations between the Georgia Museum of Art and Common Good Atlanta, a college-in-prison program that serves six prisons in Georgia, to connect the university with the incarcerated community and explore the role of the arts in prison education. Her students have completed projects to bring museum experiences to incarcerated students and helped bring the art exhibit curated by women in Whitworth Women’s Facility, “Art is a Form of Freedom,” to life. Her class has also collaborated with Time Out of Joint, an organization that employs former prisoners as teachers, to develop Shakespeare workshops for high school and college classrooms across the U.S. Young was a Service-Learning Fellow in the 2020-21 cohort.
David L. Chiesa – Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award
LLED 4620/6620S – ESOL Service-Learning
David L. Chiesa, clinical assistant professor with the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education, has inspired dozens of future educators with his course, English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Service-Learning. Through this course, Chiesa’s students have the opportunity to tutor culturally and linguistically diverse students at Bay Creek Elementary School in Walton County and reflect on their growth as educators and professionals. With the growing population of ESOL learners in Georgia schools, Chiesa collaborates with Walton County educators to focus on the specific needs of elementary school students, providing UGA students with real-world experience in modifying and honing their lesson plans. Chiesa has taught this class every semester since spring 2020, and more than 100 UGA students have enrolled and tutored more than 225 Bay Creek students in that time.
