College of Charleston Announces Distinguished Faculty Awards

^{Above: 2025 Faculty Awards of Distinction winners (l-r), Kathleen Janech, Claire Curtis, Antonio Pérez-Núñez, Christy Kollath-Cattano, Myra Seaman, Kate Owens, Gabrielle Principe and Heather Fullerton with Provost Suzanne Austin (Photo by Lizzie Koschnick)}

Every year, the Office of the Provost recognizes outstanding faculty members who demonstrate excellence in various areas of advising, teaching and research through a series of Faculty Awards of Distinction.

The College of Charleston 2025 Distinguished Faculty Award recipients were announced at the Celebration of Faculty on Thursday, April 24, 2025, in the School of Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering Building. Also recognized: those named emeriti faculty and those granted tenure and promotion, renewals, positive third-year reviews, superior post-tenure reviews and sabbaticals.

Congratulations to the following faculty members who received Distinguished Faculty Awards this year!

William V. Moore Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Award: Heather Fullerton

Heather Fullerton, associate professor of biology, received the 2025 William V. Moore Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Award, which honors faculty members selected by their peers as exemplifying the teacher-scholar model. The recipients’ exemplary scholarship and teaching have enriched the intellectual lives of students throughout their careers.

Fullerton teaches microbiology and introductory biology courses, developing a rapport with a diverse array of students from various majors, career trajectories and academic levels. She uses her expertise to train lifelong learners for their future careers in academic, medical and professional realms. In her classes, she combines current research and pop or current news references to relate concepts to students’ everyday lives and further support lifelong learning. Her teaching laboratory is a hands-on environment that exemplifies a student-focused approach.  The teacher-scholar model was her driving force to become a professor at the College, and it will continue to push her toward excellence in student-focused activities. 

In addition, Fullerton is outstanding in mentoring and in guiding independent research projects. Because of her one-on-one, personalized, hands-on approach, undergraduate and graduate student researchers find success after graduation. Not only is she an inspiration to her students, but she is highly collaborative in her research, which helps build research professional networks for her, the College and her mentees, too. She addresses and advances important central questions in environmental microbiology and uses modern cutting-edge computational bioinformatic approaches. She is well-regarded by the scientific community.

Distinguished Teaching Award: Claire Curtis

Claire Curtis, professor of political science, received the 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award, which honors those faculty members who are outstanding among the College’s many exceptional teachers, typifying high standards and commitment to teaching excellence throughout their careers.

Widely regarded as a master teacher by her colleagues and deeply respected by her students, Curtis is an exceptional, passionate and dedicated educator who has taught courses across multiple disciplines, including political science, English and women’s and gender studies. Deeply committed to student success, she embodies the highest standards of teaching excellence and fosters a dynamic and interactive learning environment that not only engages students with the material, but also encourages them to explore diverse perspectives on controversial issues. No matter what course she is teaching, Curtis inspires students to become lifelong learners, cultivates an inclusive and intellectually rigorous classroom culture and enhances the academic community through mentorship and leadership. 

Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award: Kathleen Janech

Kathleen Janech, adjunct faculty member in the Department of Biology, received the 2025 Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award, which honors adjunct faculty members who are outstanding among the College’s many exceptional teachers, typifying high standards and commitment to teaching excellence throughout their careers.

Janech embodies this award through her personalized engagement with her students, her commitment to lifelong learning and her enthusiasm for her field. Inspired by the living things around us all, she shares her love for biology with her students by showing its relevance and connection to their lives. This passion compels her to connect with students and better understand where they are in their educational development so she can help them in their own personal quest for knowledge. She takes her role in retaining first-year students very seriously, supporting them as they figure out their path to success in college and connecting them to campus resources and to other students. Despite teaching large classes, she is committed to staying connected with her students individually, encouraging office visits and open communication.

Distinguished Research Award: Myra Seaman

Myra Seaman, professor of English, received the 2025 Distinguished Research Award, which recognizes those faculty members who have a significant career of research, demonstrated by the body of a faculty member’s scholarly and/or creative works within the past few years and evaluated based on their quality and significance as well as their quantity.

As a scholar of medieval literature, Seaman has built an exceptional scholarly record that combines groundbreaking original research with transformative editorial leadership in medieval studies, demonstrated through major publications, distinguished editorial work and significant disciplinary leadership. She has spent her career working to make medieval literature accessible to modern readers so that it may continue to be read in the future. She is committed to contributing her own innovative readings and creating forums for this scholarship, resulting in six books, 17 journal articles or book chapters and 68 talks. In addition to being the founding editor of the award-winning quarterly journal postmedieval, she has an impressive record of conference presentations, invited talks and organizational leadership. Her work actively shapes scholarly discourse while maintaining a productive trajectory that promises continued impact. Seaman’s accomplishments are extraordinary and her combination of intellectual innovation and scholarly generosity are changing her field.

Distinguished Advising Award: Kate Owens

Kate Owens, associate chair of the Department of Mathematics, received the 2025 Distinguished Advising Award, which recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated sustained dedication to students in the area of academic advising.

Owens recognizes that students are individuals with unique goals, strengths and challenges, and her advising reflects her goal of empowering students to believe in their potential and to give them the tools to achieve it. Maintaining that effective advising is a student-centered process that empowers students to take ownership of their academic journeys, she is committed to personalized advising that helps students connect their passions and interests to their coursework and degree programs. Not only has she helped thousands of students navigate their academic paths, but she has helped her department navigate their advising as well – both through the Math and Statistics Advising Team she created this academic year and through her role coordinating, reinventing and fine-tuning the department’s placement system since 2019. Driven by a commitment to student success and equity, her efforts ensure that no student is left behind due to an outdated placement system.

Distinguished Service Award: Christy Kollath-Cattano

Christy Kollath-Cattano, associate professor of health and human performance, received the 2025 Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes the outstanding contributions of a colleague who, beyond his or her required duties, has a sustained career of serving the College community in an outstanding and distinguished manner.

Since 2015, Kollath-Cattano has served the health of the College community by supporting, researching and developing campus initiatives that address students, faculty and staff wellness and wellbeing – all while maintaining a high level of teaching effectiveness and achieving significant research accomplishments. Drawing on her public health–related skills and her expertise in substance abuse prevention and treatment among young adults and adolescents, she has worked with many working groups and committees that aim to address student health needs across campus. In addition to leading the annual Student Health Survey for the past nine years (data from which she used to advocate for and build programming for the Collegiate Recovery Program and the Office of Student Wellness and Well-being), she has co-created and evaluated six health promotion campaigns on mental health, substance abuse and the general wellness of CofC students. Her service is the very epitome of how collaboration and dedication can have a profound impact on students’ experience and success.

Distinguished Undergraduate Mentor Award: Gabrielle Principe

Gabrielle Principe, psychology professor, received the 2025 Distinguished Undergraduate Mentor Award, which honors faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to and excellence in mentoring undergraduate students in individual research or creative projects by supporting and influencing students’ educational and career paths.

With a strong belief that mentorship helps students develop critical thinking and expression skills that they can use throughout their personal professional lives, Principe creates an inclusive environment for experiential learning through individualized mentoring strategies. Mentorship is integrated into her scholarship seamlessly, and she works with students in each phase of their research – from conceptualization, data collection, analysis, presentation and manuscript writing. She has mentored 54 students in her lab and 20 bachelor’s essay projects, 49 independent studies, four tutorials and five 100-level research experiences – resulting in countless publications and presentations. Principe also provides support, guidance and connections to meaningful experiences as students navigate post-college life and graduate program applications.

Innovation in Teaching Award: Antonio Pérez-Núñez

Antonio Pérez-Núñez, associate professor of Hispanic Studies, received the 2025 Innovation in Teaching Award, which recognizes faculty members who integrate experiential learning, new technologies, research-based instructional strategies and innovative pedagogical approaches to improve student engagement, learning outcomes and overall success in face-to-face, hybrid, and online learning contexts. Recipients push the boundaries of traditional methods to foster engaging, dynamic and impactful learning experiences and also share their innovative practices with colleagues to promote a culture of teaching excellence and innovation within the institution.

Pérez-Núñez has been a consistently imaginative leader in the introduction and implementation of innovative teaching tools since he joined the College in 2015, when he introduced Talk Abroad, the conversation platform that became a core component of the curriculum and greatly enhanced real world language practice for CofC students. Always a head of the curve – and tirelessly committed to developing new, groundbreaking technology – he has continued to transform language learning at the College ever since: This year he conceptualized, researched, developed, tested and refined his own AI-driven conversation platform, My Conversation Trainer, which has the potential to not only shape students’ learning experiences but also influence the broader field of language pedagogy. His unwavering commitment, creativity and innovation have already had a lasting impact, and his work will undoubtedly continue to shape the future of language learning.