Winner of the Beltran Award: Jamie-Lee Josselyn

Last night at the end-of-academic-year “hub party” at the Kelly Writers House I had the pleasure of announcing the winner of the Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring—for 2017-18. She is Jamie-Lee Josselyn! Jamie-Lee is an utterly remarkable teacher. On the 0-4 scale used for student evaluations, Jamie-Lee’s courses often average 4.0. Students are positively stunned by her capacity for mentorship and guidance as well as instruction. The Beltran Family established an endowment for this annual award because they wanted to help us maintain “the spirit of informal and outside-of-class mentoring that the best teachers embody.” Well, we cannot imagine a teacher who better embodies that spirit. Congratulations to Jamie-Lee! We can’t wait to see what innovative program you produce at KWH next year.

For more information on the Beltran Award, see below.

We are very grateful to John Paul and Lina Beltran, who attended this year’s Beltran Award program (created by Laynie Browne) and who so completely get what we are trying to achieve through KWH as a space for alternative learning.

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The Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring at the Kelly Writers House is presented annually to one of our faculty who teach writing in the extracurricular context of the Kelly Writers House, its projects, programs and people. The Beltran Award is not just for excellent teaching in the classroom, although that’s obviously relevant and important; it’s intended to honor the making and sustaining of a learning environment, and the spirit of informal and outside-of-class mentoring that the best teachers embody. The Beltran Award will be announced and celebrated at the end-of-year KWH “hub” party each year. The recipient will receive a $1,000 stipend and additionally will be provided with up to $2,200 to incur costs of organizing and hosting a program or programs at the Writers House in the following academic year.

Students associated with the Writers House may nominate a teacher for the Beltran Award. Nominations can take the form of a simple email naming the nominee and briefly describing the reasons why this person ought to be so recognized.