Carol Hernandez, Senior Instructional Designer
Jennifer Carter, Ph.D., a lecturer teaching in the Department of Philosophy and the College of Business, is one of six SBU adjunct faculty members selected for the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching given by the State University of New York (SUNY). The awards are conferred to acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of continuous academic excellence. The Excellence in Adjunct Teaching is a new award category, which recognizes consistently superior teaching at the graduate, undergraduate or professional level.
During the past year, Carter has worked closely with the instructional design team in the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) to redesign and build a completely asynchronous online course, PHI 108: Logical and Critical Reasoning. The philosophy course has the largest enrollment for any course in that department, with about 550 students per semester. With the help of CELT’s instructional designers, Carter transformed the course from a face-to-face model to a completely online and asynchronous model where students move through as a cohort, but with weekly online assignments where they engage with each other, the instructor, and the course content. Carter has taught the redesigned course twice so far and student feedback is positive, she said. Students have commented on the high level of interactivity and real-time engagement with the instructor and their peers, all despite connecting in a virtual classroom. While the course tends to be taken mostly by freshmen and sophomores, it can be useful for upperclassmen as well because it supports critical thinking and lifelong learning. The course addresses the Stony Brook Curriculum as both an ESI: Evaluate and Synthesize Researched Information, and an HUM: Address Problems Using Critical Analysis and the Methods of the Humanities.
Working with CELT, she said, was a high point in her teaching journey. “There were times during the pandemic when I was discouraged and working with CELT was really great.”
Carter, who is originally from California, earned both her doctorate and master’s degrees at Stony Brook University. She has been teaching for about a decade. Carter typically has 2-4 undergraduate teaching assistants in the redesigned philosophy course, which is critical for a course that provides a high level of interaction for students. A best practice for online course design and facilitation is to create a sense of “presence” by establishing community and interdependence. However, that also requires real-time human facilitation by the instructor and teaching assistants. In addition to philosophy courses, Carter also teaches BUS 447: Business Ethics, first-year seminars, and a spring special topics course for undergraduates.
As an educator, Carter is passionate about developing and mentoring both undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants. Each year, Carter mentors 4 to 6 Ph.D. Philosophy students and 3 to 8 undergraduate teaching assistants. With the doctoral students, she instructs them on course development, lecturing, grading, and “how to arrange the course and information so that it is digestible for students and keeps their interest,” she said. For undergraduates, Carter provides overall mentoring and leadership guidance, while also facilitating reading groups, guiding the teaching assistants, advising students on graduate school applications, and directing the honors theses.
Carter was nominated for the Chancellor’s Award by her department colleagues. “It made me feel really special,” she said. “I think there were a few important factors that made me stand out. Innovation was one element. I think developing the new course and the new curricula – especially those that address the future of SBU students.
“The course that I developed with CELT addresses not just the needs of students on campus today but also the needs of the students coming to the campus in the future. In the sense that it accommodates the widest variety of students: students with disabilities, students in different disciplines, and with different backgrounds . . . but it’s still rigorous and it still piques students’ interest.”
Carter said she is proud of the award because it highlights her dedication to teaching. She says she has put a lot of effort into developing future educators from a variety of disciplines: medicine, economics, finance, psychology, sociology. “It is absolutely what I thrive on and it really gives me a lot of satisfaction to help others to have the skills to create their own learning as a way of life.”
In addition to serving the SBU community as an educator and mentor, Carter was elected in 2021 to serve as the secretary for the Stony Brook Center Campus Chapter of the United University Professions (UUP). The UUP represents academic faculty, students affairs personnel, librarians and others who work on campus. The chapter Carter is involved in has more than 2,300 members.
For Carter, teaching and learning is not just her profession, but a way of life. Carter is also a parent, and delivered four of her children at Stony Brook University Hospital. Imagine her surprise when the pediatric resident came in to examine one of her newborns and it turned out to be one of her former SBU students. “We were just so happy. We had talked a lot during the class, so we fell right back into our usual pattern. It was really sweet.”
The six adjunct professors at Stony Brook University who won the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching given by the State University of New York (SUNY) are:
- Jennifer Lyons Carter, Department of Philosophy
- Michele Giua, Department of European Languages
- Leslie Marino, Department of European Languages
- Patricia Maurides, Department of Art
- Jessica Mitchell, School of Social Welfare
- Joanne Souza, Department of Biology