Hegarty Award Citation for Professor Karen Anderson

The Louise F. Hegarty Award for Excellence in Teaching is given each year to a full-time faculty member whose teaching has had a marked influence on the lives of Stonehill students.  The Committee on Excellence in Teaching, representing Students, Faculty, and the Alumni Council, selects the outstanding teacher from those nominated by students and faculty members.  The award is named in honor of one of Stonehill’s most accomplished teachers and the recipient stands as a symbol of the entire faculty’s commitment to teaching and academic excellence. At this 2019 Academic Convocation, Stonehill College is proud to bestow the Louise F. Hegarty Award for Excellence in Teaching on Professor Karen Anderson, Professor of Education.

While many outstanding professors are nominated for this prestigious award, few receive nominations from the number and range of students, alumni, and colleagues as Professor Anderson.  Her commitment to teaching excellence and mentoring is abundantly clear in these words of students and faculty who nominated her. 

• Professor Anderson was one of the first faculty members I met when I arrived at Stonehill.  It was evident from the very beginning that she practices what she preaches.  Nearly everything I’ve learned about creating meaningful relationships with students and families, I learned from her.  From the moment we met, she built connections to me, became a mentor, and was always available to answer questions and model best instructional practices.  She has always provided me with excellent feedback and each piece of it has made me a better educator.  Her passion for designing engaging, hands-on curriculum is still the driving of my own instructional design.
• Everything in her class connects. Nothing is superfluous or irrelevant. She never gives out busy work and I never once had to ask myself, “why am I doing this? What is the point?” because it was always clear that what I was doing was important and relevant.
• Karen is much more than a teacher, she is a friend, a guidance counselor, a life coach, and she has impacted my life so tremendously. Her primary focus is not to just teach but to get to know her students. Karen’s heart is as big as her personality and I could not think of someone more deserving than her.
• Karen’s enthusiasm in the classroom is outstanding. She brings so much joy into her lectures and always wants her students to achieve; she brings out the best in them.

As her department chair noted in evaluating Professor Anderson’s work, the Chair’s “job is to ensure that our licensure students graduate from Stonehill ready to be successful in their licensure roles.  Karen Anderson is a huge part of why we are so successful in this regard.  She is, in every respect, a symbol of our department’s commitment to academic excellence.”  And so with deep pride we today recognize Professor Karen Anderson for exemplifying Stonehill’s commitment to provide an education of the highest caliber that fosters critical thinking, free inquiry, and the interchange of ideas.

Given this twenty-eighth day of August,

Two thousand and nineteen