2021 Loser-Savkar Fellow
The Loser-Savkar Faculty Professional Development Fellowship Committee is very pleased to announce the 2021 Loser-Savkar Fellow – Dr. Cheri Lemieux Spiegel, Professor of English on the Annandale Campus. During her time at the college, Dr. Spiegel has held multiple leadership roles including Technology Application Center Faculty Mentor, Campus-Lead for Achieving the Dream, and Assistant Dean of Composition. However, her first love, as someone who may forever identify first as a teacher, will always be the classroom. There, she teaches introductory writing courses that emphasize critical thinking and writing processes.
Dr. Spiegel holds a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Old Dominion University and, from Virginia Tech, both a Master of Arts and a Future Professoriate Graduate Certificate. While her degrees emphasized rhetoric, writing, and pedagogy, she also studied sociolinguistics and visual rhetoric during her time at Virginia Tech. Her doctoral research proposed and revised a theory of guerrilla rhetoric that was based upon the premise that guerrilla practice might be removed from the battlefield and used in the operations of nonviolent groups who struggle against the limitations of their conditions. As the 2021-2022 recipient of the Loser-Savkar Fellowship Dr. Spiegel will be studying how Non-Violent Communication might be used to re-see the outcomes of the college composition sequence and classic pedagogical approaches to argument and persuasion.
The $1,000 Loser-Savkar Faculty Professional Development Fellowship was established by Reva A. Savkar and Robert C. Loser to promote better faculty teaching and student learning. Professor Savkar and Professor Loser hold emeriti status at NOVA. Professor Savkar is a pioneer in online teaching, developed the first online college chemistry courses in the US, and received the 2013 VCCS Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Professor Loser is a pioneer in NOVA’s use of online technologies, teaching strategies, and course design, and received the 2014 NOVA Presidential Sabbatical Award.
The call for proposals for the 2022 Loser-Savkar Faculty Professional Development Fellowship will open in Fall 2021. For more information, visit the Loser-Savkar Faculty Professional Development Fellowship website.
Submitted by:
Charlotte Calobrisi, ccalobrisi@nvcc.edu