Associate Professor Sue Staats is the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning’s most recent winner of the Horace T. Morse University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Staats is recognized and respected by her colleagues as a highly innovative and creative scholar, researcher, and instructor.
“Creating pathways for students to discover a personal connection, and then seeing the path they take, is the greatest joy for me as a teacher,” says Staats. “When students can create and explore on their own using math, I know that they’ve learned something.”
Colleagues describe her knack for building assignments that weave skills from different disciplines and give students the chance to experience integrative learning. This, along with her personal warmth, says a former colleague, has a way of “building the confidence of immigrant and refugee students who often [have] difficulties and needs beyond those of other freshmen.” One of the nominators noted that “Sue Staats is a remarkable educator whose teaching is informed by research and whose impact on students goes far beyond the mathematics she helps students learn.”
One of Staats’s many contributions to student success is her work with students in PsTL 1006: Mathematical Modeling and Prediction. “Most of my students are not pursuing a STEM major,” she says. “There is a special responsibility that comes from working with students at the end of their formal mathematical education. For me, the most important experience for these students is to make mathematics personal, to discover ways in which mathematics contributes to their understanding of their own passions.”
Her passion for teaching transcends “a wide range of venues, from personalized classroom activities, to teaching a wide range of classes, to department program development, and increasing statewide opportunities for less-prepared students to enter college,” according to her nomination letter.
“Moments that give me the most happiness are when students find a reason to care about mathematics,” says Staats.
Sue was honored with other University 2012-13 distinguished teaching award winners at a ceremony on April 30 at the McNamara Alumni Center. The award also includes induction in the University’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
Congratulations, Sue!