June 27, 2017

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MILWAUKEE — Dr. Leah Flack, associate professor of English at Marquette University, recently received the university's highest teaching honor, the Teaching Excellence Award.

Flack referrers to her own college experience as the foundation for her love of the classroom.

"As a first-generation college student, my horizons of possibility were crucially expanded in literature classrooms in ways that have made the Jesuit model of transformative education personally meaningful to me," she says.

Flack says that in the same way she came to see literature as a vehicle of transformation and the classroom as a sacred place, she now understands the power she has to help students enlarge their own imaginative capacities.

"My ambition is for students to leave my classroom with a clear sense of themselves as readers, writers and thinkers with an appreciation for how literature can be a vehicle for growth and transformation," she says. "My best moments as a teacher are when I can see students recognize that meaningful experiences with great literature have changed them."

Teaching Excellence Awards are the highest honor bestowed upon Marquette University faculty members. Recipients are nominated by their colleagues and students for demonstrating excellence as teacher-scholars.

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