Distinguished Educator

April 24, 2013

UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

UT Tyler’s Catherine Ross Named to Academy of Distinguished Teachers

April 24, 2013

Media Contact:  Hannah Buchanan
Editor/Writer–Strategic Communications & Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.539.7196 (cell)

April 24, 2013

Dr. Catherine Ross has been named to the 2013 inaugural class of the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers, Dr. Alisa White, provost and senior vice president at The University of Texas at Tyler, announced.

Ross is an associate professor of English and recipient of the 2011 UT System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award.

The academy has been created to recognize outstanding educators who have demonstrated leadership in education and are committed to improving teaching across the UT System.

“Dr. Ross’s life as an academic at UT Tyler has already had significant implications on the study of intellectual communities here. She has a clear record of sustained teaching excellence and extraordinary commitment to teaching,” White said.

Ross was among the 12 nominated and recognized during an induction ceremony and reception on April 23 in Austin. Members will serve as the System-level advocacy group dedicated to enhancing teaching, fostering innovation in the classroom and promoting interdisciplinary perspectives on education.

“Dr. Ross serves as an excellent example of our outstanding and innovative faculty here at UT Tyler. We are proud of her recognition, and more importantly, proud of her commitment to providing innovative and quality education for our students,” UT Tyler President Rodney Mabry said.

Serving UT Tyler since 1998, Ross teaches British literature and rhetoric and composition courses. Additionally, she has taught in the UT Tyler Honors Program and continues to work on curriculum development for the Department of Literature and Languages. Ross also serves on the UT Tyler Global Awareness Through Education faculty. Her commitment to education includes a belief in making the historical and cultural contexts of all texts as real and present for today’s students as possible.

She was also instrumental in starting UT Tyler’s iPad Pilot Program, in which selected courses applied iPads for instruction, as well as the subsequent iPad research project that accessed the use of mobile-learning devices on student learning and engagement.

Among other honors at UT Tyler, Ross previously received the Alpha Chi Omega Honor Society’s Outstanding Faculty Award and the UT Tyler White Fellowship for Teaching Excellence and Piper Professor nomination.

She holds a master of arts in interdisciplinary studies from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in English from UT Austin.

Using a campus-based selection process, each institution identified its nominees and submitted them for consideration. For the initial induction into the academy, only Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award recipients from 2009 through 2012 were eligible for nomination. Nominees must have tenure or equivalent rank for contingent faculty (senior lecturer and above).

For more information about the academy, visit https://www.utsystem.edu/offices/academic-affairs.

One of the 15 campuses of the UT System, UT Tyler offers excellence in teaching, research, artistic performance and community service. More than 80 undergraduate and graduate degree programs are available at UT Tyler, which has an enrollment of almost 7,000 high-ability students at its campuses in Tyler, Longview and Palestine.