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Wed, 20 Sep 2017 15:13:57 +0000

Ramsey receives Feminist Teacher-Mentor Award admin Wed, 09/20/2017 - 11:13 September 20, 2017 Alan Shirk
READING, Pa. — The Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (OSCLG) has presented its 2017 Feminist Teacher-Mentor Award to E. Michele Ramsey, associate professor of communication arts and sciences and women's studies at Penn State Berks. Ramsey will be honored at the OSCLG’s 40th annual conference in Omaha, Nebraska, Oct. 5 to 8.

OSCLG, which started as a series of interdisciplinary conferences that began at Bowling Green State University in 1978, each year selects one exemplary feminist teacher-mentor who has inspired students and colleagues by modeling feminist ideals of caring, community power-sharing and commitment while also earning individual and collaborative records of achievement.

Competition for the Feminist Teacher-Mentor Award is intense. Nominations are encouraged among academic ranks and the award process involves two stages. At the first stage, the potential winner is nominated by letter by students and colleagues; the second stage involves additional support and a statement from the nominee.

Ramsey, who was supported by more than a dozen recommendations from students, fellow faculty members and other colleagues, considers teaching and mentoring the most important element of her job.

She credited her own former faculty for showing her how important undergraduate teaching and mentoring can be. “I was fortunate to have faculty members in my undergraduate career who truly cared about my education and my future at a time when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life,” Ramsey noted.

She added, “That excellence in teaching and mentorship continued throughout graduate school and I knew that while I would always enjoy doing research as a faculty member, my heart was in undergraduate education and the opportunity to give my students the support my faculty members gave me during those very formative years of my life.”

Ramsey also counts many of the faculty she works with at Penn State Berks as excellent role models for ethics and the practice of teaching and mentoring.

A professor at Penn State Berks since 2000, her courses include Public Speaking; Message Evaluation; Careers in Communication; Gender and Communication; Rhetoric of American Horror Films; Conflict Management, Black American Rhetoric, Issues in Freedom of Expression, and Contemporary American Political Rhetoric. Her research interests include representations of gender in the media, women's rights rhetoric, social movement rhetoric, and political rhetoric.

She has received the 2001 OSCLG Cheris Kramarae Dissertation Award; 2006 Penn State Berks Outstanding Faculty Advising Award; 2008 Penn State Berks Outstanding Faculty Service Award; 2009 Curricular Integration Award from the President's Commission on LGBTQ Equity at Penn State University; 2010 Achieving Woman Award (faculty category) from the President's Commission on Women at Penn State University; 2015 Rosemary Schraer Mentoring Award from the President's Commission on Women at Penn State University; and 2016 Community Partnership Award from the Junior League of Reading.

Ramsey holds a doctorate in speech communication from the University of Georgia, and a master in communication studies and a baccalaureate of applied arts and sciences in political science from the University of North Texas.

For additional information, contact Ramsey at emr10@psu.edu.