Susan K. Michael awarded prestigious UNC Charlotte Award for Teaching Excellence

On September 6, Susan K. Michael, senior lecturer in the Department of Chemistry, was awarded the 2024 UNC Charlotte Award for Teaching Excellence. The UNC Charlotte Award for Teaching Excellence is one of the most important and prestigious traditions at UNC Charlotte, honoring outstanding non-tenure track teachers on campus. John Taylor, teaching professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, was also honored as a finalist at the awards ceremony.

“I am overwhelmed with joy right now. There’s an African proverb that says ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” Michael said to the audience during her acceptance speech. Michael credits the people around her, including amazing students and numerous colleagues, for helping her get this far.

Michael has a B.A. from Augustana College and a M.S. from UNC Charlotte. She had to adjust to calling her former professors by their first names when they became her colleagues. In a career of 38 years of teaching, she has taught full time at Charlotte for 26 years, educating over 10,000 students in introductory lectures and labs. She regularly teaches multiple sections of General Chemistry I (CHEM 1251), a large lecture course with enrollment of around 180 students. Despite students generally considering this to be one of their most challenging courses, they praise Michael’s teaching style as informative, passionate and inspiring. 

“Students are going to make the future world we live in, and to have a hand in shaping that is a privilege. Working with each one to see how they grow is also a privilege,” Michael said. 

As to her teaching approach, she said “I try to review often so that things we’ve already learned can be stepping stones to new material. The lower I can make the barriers to chemistry, the easier it will be for students to learn more material, to retain what they already know and increase their confidence,” said Michael. 

Likewise, Michael’s faculty peers recognize her teaching techniques as “intentional, well planned and wonderfully executed,” and she often serves as mentor to new teaching faculty, including visiting faculty and full-time teaching professors. Michael has served as the Department of Chemistry’s Advising Coordinator since January 2013, providing over 200 advising meetings per year to well over 2,000 students. She has also been the face of the department to new students for the past decade, attending EXPLORE open houses, admitted student days, new student orientations and other recruiting sessions.

“Susan Michael is an exceptional teacher and very deserving of the UNC Charlotte Award for Teaching Excellence,” said Bernadette Donovan-Merkert, dean of the College of Science. “We value her contributions to creating a supportive learning environment and the impact she has made through a career of dedication to our students.”

As part of a small team, Michael helped establish CHEM 1200: Fundamentals of Chemistry, an introductory course providing the foundation for subsequent success in CHEM 1251 for students with little or no chemistry background. Michael was the first instructor in Fall 2011, and has continued to help refine the course over the years. 

In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Michael has served as the CHEM 1252L lab coordinator and the CHEM 1251 lecture coordinator for many years. As lab coordinator, she has trained and supervised all graduate teaching assistants and implemented or modified countless labs in the curriculum, and as lecture coordinator, she coordinates syllabi, Canvas pages, in-class quizzes and handles all the communications with publishers and online content providers. 

“Every time I rotate into CHEM 1251 for a semester, I am always amazed by the amount of work that Susan puts into coordinating the course and how much she does to assist the other instructors, including me,” said Thomas A. Schmedake, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry. 

Michael said that these days, she’s inspired by Coach Andy Reid of her beloved Kansas City Chiefs, “He’s not a young man, just like I’m not a young woman, but he is able to motivate his players to get the best out of them and change his strategies for maximum success.” 

She has been fundamental in many curriculum and instructional development projects within the Department of Chemistry and has been continuously engaged in learning and implementing new teaching methods. As the leader in digital integration of the Department of Chemistry laboratory courses, she led the successful transition to online laboratories for CHEM 1252L: General Chemistry II Laboratory during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Transitioning in-person, hands-on learning experiences to a meaningful online experience was a near-impossible task, but she somehow accomplished it with little prep time and no foundation to build from,” said Schmedake. Michael has since worked with publishers to implement the use of LabFlow into the CHEM 1252L curriculum to provide pre-lab preparation and post-lab coaching, continuing to maximize the student learning experience.