Gore Excellence in Teaching Award
The Gore Excellence in Teaching Award of the Bill and Vieve Gore Endowment Trust was established to recognize successful teaching over a significant period of time, individual commitment to improve teaching, effectiveness in improving and encouraging student learning, and excellence in classroom or clinical settings. The recipient must be a member of the full-time faculty at Westminster University and is selected by their peers.
Dr. Connie Etter
2025 Gore Excellence in Teaching Award Winner
Dr. Connie Etter is an associate professor of justice studies and honors at Westminster University. Dr. Etter earned her BA in Religion Honors at Concordia College and her MA and PhD in anthropology from Syracuse University. Prior to beginning full-time teaching at Westminster University in 2018, she was an adjunct faculty at Westminster and Executive Director of South India Term Abroad at George Washington University. Her recent anthropological scholarship focuses on Palestinian cycling group founders and participants in the occupied West Bank.
Past Winners
Peggy Cain
Professor Peggy Cain, PhD, has taught at Westminster for 26 years. She designed and
taught more than two dozen courses. She is the founding director of the Master of
Arts in Community and Organizational Leadership, has led significant curricular updates
in and directs the Master of Education, and is the founding director of the educational
studies major and minor. Most recently, she is piloting a new MACOL course called
Envisioning Futures. She is the faculty fellow for Global Learning, supporting integration
of IPSL Global Engagement into Westminster’s curriculum.
Peggy Cain holds a PhD in adult education and an MA in Latin American studies from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA in communications from Wartburg College.
She has directed educational travel programs in Mexico, Guatemala, and the southwestern
US. Her research interests focus on social change, adult learning in social movements
and community settings, Indigenous knowledge, Latin American studies, and future thinking.
Julia Kamenetzky
Julia Kamenetzky, PhD, is an associate professor of physics at Westminster. Prior to this, Dr. Kamenetzky was an National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona. She completed her MS and PhD in Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and BA in Physics at Cornell College. Her PhD research focused on molecular gas in star-forming galaxies, primarily using the Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO). She is also involved in light pollution research, variable star monitoring, physics/astronomy education research, advancing the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM, and learning about the interaction between science and public policy.
Robyn Hyde
Dr. Robyn Hyde is a scientist, researcher, and educator with degrees from Northwest Nazarene University (BS in chemistry and biology) and University of Utah (PhD in medicinal chemistry) and has a wide knowledge base including medicinal, organic, forensic, food, and environmental chemistry. Robyn engages in community events to excite kids about STEM, studies water chemistry in alpine lakes, and teaches in a variety of active learning styles both in the classroom and online.
Marilee Coles-Ritchie
Dr. Marilee Coles-Ritchie felt a call to teach in second grade watching her innovative teacher show genuine care for each student. More than 40 years later, her educational experiences in a variety of contexts (the Navajo Nation, downtown Boston, a small town on the Mexican-US border, a rural village in Kenya, and with practicing teachers in Yup’ik villages in Southwestern Alaska) continue to shape her ideas on what it means to teach. As a professor at Westminster University for the past 12 years, Marilee teaches and learns from students and colleagues in the Elementary Education, MAT, and MEd. programs. She also serves as Faculty Fellow for the Dumke Office of Civic Engagement, where she supports faculty who want to embed community engagement within their courses. Her philosophy is based on the inspiring words of bell hooks: “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.”