Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success

Dr. Alecia Jackson, Professor in the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies, has been awarded a Board of Governor’s Appalachian State University Teaching Excellence Award for the RCOE. Dr. Jackson joined the faculty in 2003. She teaches graduate-level research methods and critical/feminist theory courses to students who are pursuing master’s, specialist, and doctoral degrees in various program areas, both within and outside the RCOE. Jackson has directly and closely mentored over 40 graduate students in doctoral dissertation and master’s thesis work; five doctoral students she has taught and/or mentored have won the Naylor Award for Outstanding Dissertation. Because she primarily teaches critical theories and research methodologies to graduate students who are also practitioners, Jackson's goal for students is to leave her classes with the skills to conduct a critical social inquiry in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Students emerge from her courses with shifts in their thinking about socio-cultural problems, and they take on the very hard work of deconstructing normalizing practices so that they can “talk back” to common-sense ideologies that infuse educational spaces and that further disenfranchise marginalized people. In addition to the BOG teaching excellence award, Jackson is the winner of the 2019 100 Scholars Research Award (Cratis D. Williams Graduate School) and the 2019 Outstanding Mentoring Award (Reich College of Education).  Learn more about Dr. Jackson's award.