2020 Teaching Excellence Award

Associate Professor of English in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences.

She is also the 2020 recipient of the Robert and Mary Gettel Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence.

Melamed is known for her genuine and unwavering care for her students, as well as advocating for racial and economic justice and the democratization of social and political power. On campus, Melamed works with students, faculty and staff to enact a more robust anti-racism culture at Marquette and in Milwaukee.

Her colleagues in the English Department describe her as a strong role model who is not afraid to speak about topics such as racial and social injustice, which allows her students to learn in an open, honest and respectful environment.

“The university is a unique place where people come together to teach and to learn. It is an illuminating institution where you can analyze with others across lines of social division,” Melamed said. “In thinking together, we have the opportunity maybe to experience a kind of fragile, but exciting collectivity. In itself, the tenuous collectivity in the classroom changes little, but it can build thicker relations of respect and communication across the walls of a society that institutionalizes uneven life chances.”

Other nominators describe Melamed as the embodiment of Marquette’s Jesuit mission and a commanding representation of cura personalis – the Ignatian principle for caring for the whole person.

Recognizing that Melamed’s teaching instills in her students emotional, interpersonal, and intellectual strength inspires her colleagues in the English Department, and the university as a whole, to teach, lead, and offer support beyond the classroom to make the world a better place.