Looks Who’s Teaching @ John Jay
The Distinguished Teaching Prize recognizes John Jay College faculty members for their dedication to fine teaching.
Spring 2011
Kimberly Adilia Helmer, Department of English
Spring 2010
Margaret Bull Kovera, Department of Psychology
Andrea Balis, Department of History
Spring 2009
Dara Byrne, Department of Communication and Theater Arts
Nathan Lents, Department of Sciences
Jill Grose-Fifer, Department of Psychology
Margaret Bull Kovera
Margaret Bull Kovera is a Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Minnesota. Before coming to John Jay, she was a faculty member at Reed College and Florida International University, where she also served as the Director of the Ph.D. program in Legal Psychology. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychology-Law Society (APLS), the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She is the Past-President of APLS. In addition to receiving the 2010 Distinguished Teaching Prize at John Jay, she has also received the 2004 Outstanding Teacher and Mentor in Psychology and Law Award from APLS. Her research awards include the Saleem Shah Award for Early Career Achievement in Psychology and Law from APLS and the American Academy of Forensic Psychology. For more than a decade, she has had continuous funding from the National Science Foundation for her research on jury decision-making and eyewitness identification.
Margaret Bull Kovera's Teaching Philosophy
Dara N. Byrne
Dara N. Byrne is an Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York in the Department of Communication and Theater Arts. Dr. Byrne holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She is a specialist in critical language studies, intercultural communication, and digital media. Her publications include contributions to volumes such as Brown v. Board of Education: Its Impact on Public Education 1954-2004 (2005, Word for Word); HBCUs Models for Success: Supporting Achievement and Retention of Black Males (2006, Word for Word); Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media (2008, MIT Press); The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education (2004, Wiley); and The Unfinished Agenda of the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March (2005, Wiley), among others. Dara’s current research project examines vigilante justice in online social-networking sites.
Dara Byrne's Teaching Philosophy
Kimberly Adilia Helmer
Kimberly Adilia Helmer is an Assistant Professor of English at John Jay College, The City University of New York. Professor Helmer received her B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and her M.A. in Educational Linguistics (MA TESOL) from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dr. Helmer holds a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona. Her research awards from the University of Arizona include the Centennial Doctoral Student Achievement Award and the President's Award and from Washington State University, the Summer Doctoral Fellowship. Also from the University of Arizona, she was awarded the Tilly Warnock Fellowship for outstanding composition teaching and research. Dr. Helmer's interdisciplinary research areas include educational anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and multilingual literacy development. She is currently researching the effect of high stakes assessment on classroom community building and working on a book project that ethnographically chronicles the first year of an innovative charter high school, examining a cohort of Mexican-origin students' engagement with and resistance to academic learning in English and Spanish heritage language classes. Professor Helmer is also collaborating in a study that examines the effect professor collaboration in paired courses has on student learning outcomes.
Kimberly Adilia Helmer's Teaching Philosophy
Nathan Lents
Professor Lents earned a BS in Molecular Biology from St. Louis University, a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from S.L.U. Medical School, and postdoctoral training in genomics, bioinformatics, and gene expression control at NYU Cancer Institute. He has been at John Jay since 2006 and currently has three areas of active research in his laboratory: 1) molecular mechanisms of cellular signaling and cell proliferation control; 2) the effect of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in genes related to neurotransmitter signaling and the contribution of those SNPs to the genetic predisposition to mental illness; and 3) improving science education through enhanced focus on the process and nature of science and scientific research.
Nathan Lents' Teaching Philosophy
Nathan Lents' Profile Page
Jill Grose-Fifer
Jill Grose-Fifer came to John Jay in September, 2007, and is an assistant professor in the Psychology Department. She is a Neurophysiologist with research interests that center on the use of the EEG to explore sensory and cognitive function across the age span. She began her early career in the field of Vision Science (Ph.D., 1989, University of Aston in Birmingham, U.K.) and concentrated primarily on early sensory development in infants. She has charted basic visual development in various populations, including preterm and full-term neonates, infants and teenagers. Following a career hiatus spent raising her children, her research focus turned to investigating cognitive processing. Her current EEG research uses various cognitive domains to explore brain development in adolescence with a view to better understanding why teenagers are more prone to risk-taking. Dr. Grose-Fifer is also interested in pedagogical research and has a collaborative project with Dr. Karen Phillips at Hunter College to investigate the efficacy of a workshop model of teaching organic chemistry. She is a member of the learning community faculty at John Jay and the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award in 2009.
Jill Grose-Fifer's Teaching Philosophy
