Kelly Hamshaw, senior lecturer in the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, has received the 2020–2021 President’s Distinguished Senior Lecturer Award for her inspired teaching and dedicated advising and leadership.
Hamshaw works tirelessly to ensure students are equipped with the tools, competencies and mindsets to improve the quality of life in communities in which they live and serve. She has been widely recognized for her skill and commitment as a scholar-teacher, having won the UVM Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award, the Joseph E. Carrigan Award for teaching excellence in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and the Vermont Campus Compact Engaged Educator of the Year Award.
She has consistently taken on additional responsibilities to advance CALS’s priorities and serves as the CALS Self-Design Program Director and leader of the CALS Strategic Action Planning Committee, where she applies her knowledge and skills in building capacity and recognizing opportunity to affect positive change. When the university transitioned to remote instruction in 2020, she served as a Center for Teaching and Learning faculty associate, holding office hours and workshops for faculty to advise them on shifting to hybrid learning models.
For several years, Hamshaw has taught the Sustainable Community Development course to over 300 students a year during the fall, spring and summer semesters. When the course grew too big to be a service-learning course, she developed and launched a new course, Community Action Toolbox, with grant support from the Community Development Higher Education Collaborative. Amidst the pandemic-induced transition to remote learning in March of 2020, Hamshaw and her students quickly adapted the course to design projects that responded to immediate community needs stemming from COVID-19.
“Kelly has been able to fuse theory and practice to create learning opportunities that make significant contributions in real communities,” said Jane Kolodinsky, professor and chair of the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics. “Whenever possible, she seeks opportunities to respond to urgent community needs. These experiences have provided a transformative and lasting impact on our students.”
Overall, Hamshaw has taught 11 different classes at UVM, ranging from large, introductory-level lecture courses to more intensive, service-learning capstone courses designed to prepare students for professional life. She is also a Gund Graduate fellow. This summer she completed comprehensive exams toward her PhD in Natural Resources as part of the Economics for the Anthropocene Program, a collaboration between UVM, McGill University and York University led by Professor Jon Erickson in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. Her dissertation is focused on climate justice for rural communities, specifically for mobile home parks in Vermont.