Kathryn Meyers Emery was recently awarded one of the highest honors a graduate student at Michigan State University can receive, the Excellence-in-Teaching Citation, presented at the All-University Awards Convocation on February 9, 2016. She was given this award for both her formal and informal teaching of students in a variety of contexts, including Introduction to Archaeology (ANP 203), the Campus Archaeology Field School, and her Graduate School boot camps on digital identity development. In a passage from her nomination, written by Dr. Lynne Goldstein, Meyers Emery was described as “enthusiastic about archaeology, well versed in digital scholarship, and passionate about teaching. A student in her Introduction to Archaeology class described Kathryn Meyers Emery as a teacher: ‘she taught so well that I almost changed my major from physics to one related to archaeology’.”
The Excellence in Teaching Citation is just one of several achievements for her this year. She also received the MSU Certificate in College Teaching in Fall 2015. The certificate requires the creation of a portfolio of teaching materials, as well as completion of a mentored teaching experience. Meyers Emery’s digital portfolio was recognized as an exemplar and lauded for its high quality. Meyers Emery was also a Future Academic Scholars in Teaching (FAST) Returning Fellow this year. During 2014-15, Meyers Emery participated in the FAST program and conducted research on integrating digital technology into undergraduate teaching. This year, she continued this research and was invited to participate in a Center for Research, Teaching and Learning scholar exchange, where she presented her research at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Finally, Meyers Emery’s digital scholarship is being increasingly recognized. In February 2016, she was awarded a travel bursary to present her Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative project, iedlran: the early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery Mapping Project, at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. In March 2016, Meyers Emery was recognized by Forbes as being of the “8 Awesome Anthropologists Advancing Public Outreach” for her blog Bones Don’t Lie. In addition to this, Meyers Emery and colleague Kristina Kilgrove have been invited to speak at an American Anthropological Association Executive Session, “Bioarchaeologists Speak Out”, organized by Jane Buikstra and Debra Martin, on the topic of blogging and public outreach.
Meyers Emery will be graduating in May 2016, and has accepted a position at the George Eastman Museum as the Manager of Online Engagement.