Scholarship Recipients
2023 Scholarship Recipients
The SCCITL Conference Committee is pleased to announce the 2023 SCCITL Scholarship awardees. There was a total of 31 applicants for the scholarships. We are grateful to our sponsors for providing the funding for these six scholarships.
This year, we are pleased to offer scholarships across 3 unique tracks, including:
- DEI and Social Justice: This professional will have demonstrated work within diversity, equity, and inclusion, and/or social justice areas within their career that spans across projects, classes, departments, or organizations, and shows demonstrated effort towards furthering diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice within the Higher Education space. There is no expectation of the length of service, so early career and veteran faculty/staff are encouraged to apply!
- Innovations in Teaching and Learning: This professional demonstrates innovative use and application of teaching and learning pedagogical, technology, and/or research for furthering SOTL work within Higher Education. There is no expectation of the length of service, so early career and veteran faculty/staff are encouraged to apply!
- Early Career: This professional is an early career professional. Early Career is defined as an individual who is an early career, typically with up to no more than 10 years within a new career field, or who has made a major career shift in the past five years. Even in their early career, this individual demonstrates exceptional performance in their career rising to the level of this Scholarship award.
DEI and Social Justice Recipients |
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Elizabeth Floyd |
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My name is Elizabeth Floyd, and I am the new Assistant Director at Kalmia Gardens of Coker University. In my younger years, I had many wonderful formative experiences in nature camps that stoked my passion for the outdoors. I have followed that passion to educate young minds about our environment in a vibrant and immersive way for many children from diverse backgrounds including Title I schools. In July, I will lead Kalmia’s Week in the Wild summer camp. I have also planned the Kalmia Earth Day Festival which brings the whole family out to enjoy a day of fun in the outdoors. Kalmia’s Week in the Wild camp is on the cutting edge of immersive experiences. It allows kids to learn and most importantly enjoy the natural world. The classroom is fluid and different each day to keep young minds curious and engaged. I have been through Project Wet and Wild to continue to give the kids the best camp experience. We also host several wonderful guest speakers who come and share their wealth of knowledge through fun interactive activities. Black Creek Wildlife Center is one of our recurring guest speakers who brings animal ambassadors for children to meet. For many of the camp kids, this is their first and only positive experience with wildlife. The campers get to make a new animal ambassador friend and learn how to interact respectfully with different animals. Children also get to explore their creativity through the many crafts we have throughout the week. Each of these crafts will go home with campers to share their experience with the rest of their family. I am honored to receive this scholarship so I can continue to add new tools to my belt in bringing the natural world to life for young minds. |
Tiffany Hollis |
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Dr. Tiffany Hollis is currently an associate professor at Coastal Carolina University in the Educational Studies Department in the Spadoni College of Education and Social Sciences where she teaches in the Foundations Department. Dr. Hollis also teaches graduate level courses in Special Education. She serves as an affiliate faculty member with the Women and Gender Studies Program and the Charles Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies Program at Coastal Carolina. Dr. Hollis was recently appointed as the inaugural faculty fellow in the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts Center for Inclusive Excellence. She is also the Director of P-12 Educational Equity Initiatives with the Social Justice Research Initiative at Coastal. Dr. Hollis also serves as the Vice President for the South Carolina Council for Exceptional Children. She won the Distinguished Professor of the Year Award (2018), the Pat Singleton Young Student Advocate of the Year Award (2021), the Student Success Award (2021), Outstanding Service Award (2022) and the Professor of the Year Award in Foundations, Curriculum, and Instruction (2022), and Professor of the Year Award in Educational Studies (2023) from Spadoni College of Education and Social Sciences, and the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award (2022) as well as, the Advisor of the Year Award (2021) for the Women of Color group that she advises on the campus of Coastal Carolina. Dr. Hollis has a passion for community engagement. She currently serves on the Blackwater Middle School Title I Advisory Board and the School Improvement Council as well. Hollis received the “Excellence in Community Leadership Award” from Blackwater Middle School. This award is given to someone who devotes their time, service, and philanthropy to the school. Dr. Hollis has a clear and strong commitment to diversity, equity, and social justice with over 18 years in the education setting as a champion of equitable education as a social justice educator and advocate with a special education background, ten of those years were spent working with students with emotional and behavioral disabilities and students with mental health diagnoses and in various teaching and administrative roles. Dr. Hollis has worked diligently and tirelessly over the past 23 years to pay it forward and to give back since she had several mentors placed in her path who helped her realize her potential in spite of the adverse circumstances in her life and who also helped her overcome obstacles in her life. Dr. Hollis recently was awarded the Champion of Diversity Award at the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce which was presented by TD Bank which recognizes a business or individual who has made a durable commitment to embracing diversity in their workplace and community in April 2023. |
Innovation in Teaching and Learning Recipients |
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Michele Esposito |
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Dr. Michele Esposito is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, practicing both interventional cardiology and advanced heart failure as of last summer. She previously completed her training at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Since her the first year of medical school, she developed a keen interest in coronary angiography – the practice of interpreting coronary anatomy in the cardiac cath lab. However, given the lack of learning resources, it wasn’t until her fellowship in interventional cardiology over 10 years later that she was able to develop proficiency in this skill. That’s why, together with her technical team led by Dr. Wei Zhou at Michigan Tech, she developed AngioBase in August 2021. AngioBase is a medical education website for learning how to interpret coronary anatomy. AngioBase utilizes artificial intelligence to label the coronaries in an automated fashion, allowing their team to develop a large repository of labeled data. Dr. Esposito has also partnered with other leaders in cardiovascular medical education with plans for conducting randomized controlled trials to validate their solution among medical trainees. She believes that AngioBase is a step forward in modernizing learning resources by breaking tradition with the standard methodology of “on-the-job” live instruction and looks forward to launching this open-access solution by summer 2024. |
Nicholas Panasik |
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Meet Dr. Nicholas Panasik Jr., an accomplished Associate Professor in the Departments of Biology and Chemistry at Claflin University, one of the country’s top HBCUs. With a career dedicated to research and education, Dr. Panasik has made remarkable contributions in training student’s to have impactful careers in the biotechnology field. In recognition of his outstanding achievements, he was honored as a Distinguished Professor of South Carolina in 2011 by Governor Nikki Haley. Furthermore, Dr. Panasik received the prestigious Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2010. Dr. Panasik holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology from Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Panasik's research expertise encompasses protein design, temperature adaptation of biomolecules, and innovative teaching strategies in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) fields. His groundbreaking work on a novel Peer Teaching/live recording approach has garnered widespread recognition. By empowering students to record themselves teaching core concepts to their peers, this method has proven instrumental in fostering a stronger sense of community, enhancing retention rates, developing confidence and speaking abilities, and deepening understanding of advanced topics. Furthermore, this approach introduces a pioneering assessment technique that evaluates students based on their in-person explanations, moving beyond traditional written materials. This approach will be employed in Claflin’s new 2-year Online Program leading to a Master’s Degree in Biotechnology with a specific emphasis on mitigating the effects of Climate Change. |
R. J. Lambert |
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Dr. R.J. Lambert is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Academic Excellence & Writing Center at MUSC. He teaches writing and study skills to undergraduate and graduate students across MUSC’s six colleges and directs the annual dissertation retreat for doctoral students. A native Coloradoan, he survived the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and has since been interested in how individuals and communities respond to crises through writing. He has published and presented on teaching and modeling healthy risks during critical times, failed crisis response following environmental disasters, and creating safe spaces for students and faculty. He was a mental health panelist for MUSC’s 2020 Culturally Sensitive Care Workshop, a keynote panelist on gun violence and public health at the 2022 Thomas A. Pitts Memorial Lectureship, and serves as a reviewer for national journals and conferences in teaching, writing, communication, and the humanities. |
Early Career Recipients |
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Rodger Eugene Bishop II |
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With backgrounds in customer service, information and instructional design, literature, languages, and music, Rodger creates and maintains information and digital literacy initiatives in collaboration with research and instruction librarians. End-products, such as online tutorials and other learning objects, aim to enhance the instruction already underway while empowering librarians and library users alike with learning resources and tools. Rodger is also the primary SpringShare administrator, managing accounts and providing support to users, implementing updates, and providing training for use of SpringShare apps and resources. In keeping pace with technological and pedagogical advances and trends, Rodger is constantly exploring new and innovative approaches to meeting the curricular needs of students and instructors while also supporting his colleagues at Clemson Libraries. |
Alice Walz |
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Alice Walz, MD is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC, and practices pediatric critical care medicine. Dr. Walz serves as the Director of Clinical Coaching and as an Associate Program Director for the pediatrics residency program at MUSC. Dr. Walz believes that in addition to mastering clinical skills, the aim of medical education should be to facilitate the transition of each trainee along the learning continuum from novice to expert clinician while cultivating skills of adaptability and self-directed learning. As a clinician educator her main academic interest is in the use of coaching techniques to support the professional development of medical learners as they transition from undergraduate medical student to practicing resident physician trainee in an ever-changing medical field. . Dr. Walz runs a Clinical Coaching Program for pediatric residents at MUSC, where she trains faculty coaches to use direct observation, guided self-reflection, and targeted feedback to maximize the communication and teaching skills of resident learners, as well as support them in setting and reaching their own clinical performance goals. The particular use of coaching in this program aims to foster growth mindset and the habits of life-long learning in this next generation of physicians. . Dr. Walz has presented many local and national workshops on the use of coaching techniques to improve team performance, time management, and to promote growth mindset. Her ongoing research examines the landscape of coaching programs in pediatric training programs and aims to serve as a reference for graduate medical education programs considering the development of a coaching program at their own institution. |