UGA Only University In Nation With Two Recipients of Beckman Award For Teaching Excellence

Two University of Georgia professors have received the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award for teaching excellence, and one of these, Dr. Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor is a professor who teaches in the Graduate Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) online program. Terry College of Business’s Dr. Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander also received the 2015 award. The two of them are among ten professors nationwide to be honored with this award. 

The award honors faculty members “who have inspired their former students to make a significant contribution to society,” and UGA is the only university in the nation with two 2015 recipients. Bennett-Alexander and Cahnmann-Taylor will each receive a $25,000 award and be honored at a Nov. 14 ceremony at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta. 

“To have two winners of the Beckman Award in the same year is an outstanding accomplishment for the university,” said President Jere W. Morehead. It is extremely valuable to have that caliber of faculty members both physically and virtually teaching at UGA. 

Cahnmann-Taylor, one of the youngest recipients of the Beckman Award, joined the UGA faculty in 2002 and is a professor of language and literacy education and a faculty member in UGA’s teachers of English to speakers of other languages and world language education program. She was nominated by her former students Dell Perry Giles and Carrie Woodcock, who credit her with inspiring them to open Georgia’s first two dual-immersion, bilingual, public K-8 schools. Together, these schools serve 2,000 students and their families, and have accelerated to 20 such schools in Georgia. 

“Following Misha’s example of putting people in the right places to make educational reform and providing them with the models they critically need, both our schools have opened their doors to hundreds of educators from across the Southeast and abroad who come to see innovation in action,” Giles and Woodcock wrote in their nomination letter.

The Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award Trust was originated in 2008 and has since bestowed more than $1.7 million to 73 professors and other faculty members. The idea for the Beckman Award was conceived by Gail McKnight Beckman in recognition of her mother, Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman.