Reading and elementary education professor Tracy Rock is a recipient of the 2015 UNC Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award.
This annual honor recognizes one professor at each of North Carolina’s public institutions. The 17 recipients were nominated by individual campus committees and selected by the Board of Governors’ Committee on Personnel and Tenure. Each award winner will receive a commemorative bronze medallion and a $12,500 cash prize; the honor will be presented formally during the spring graduation ceremony on each campus.
This past fall, Rock was named the recipient of UNC Charlotte’s top teaching honor, the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence.
Mike Putman, chair of the Reading and Elementary Education Department, said it’s a special combination of talent and energy that makes Rock such a great professor.
“Tracy brings a passion for teaching to every class. Ultimately, she wants to ensure the candidates she teaches are prepared to enter the classroom and to have an impact on the children they work with,” he stated. “In her instruction, she seeks to balance fundamental theoretical knowledge with practical knowledge that will be useful in the classroom, which I think resonates with her students.”
It resonated with former student Leslie Cole. “Dr. Rock has the extraordinary ability to make you feel as though this is no longer just another college course and that this is, for lack of a better term, ‘the real deal.’ She takes the knowledge that we have and gives us the opportunities to really challenge what we know.”
Rock stated teaching future teachers is a large responsibility.
“Encouraging and supporting their development as effective practitioners has the potential to have far-reaching impact for years to come,” she said. “The full realization of the responsibility and important purpose of teacher education makes what I do not only special but also very fulfilling.”
This semester, Rock is instructor for “Teaching Social Studies to Elementary School Learners” and “Integrating the Curriculum for Elementary School Learners.”
Putman, the department chair, said Rock was the first person he met at UNC Charlotte, and she immediately struck him as “someone who was enthusiastic, gracious, humble and very supportive. I think these traits carry over into her teaching and help make her the educator she is,” he added.
Cole, the former student, said teachers like Tracy Rock have her believing she can make a difference.
“As someone who struggled significantly in the public school system, it gives me great hope that I will be able to make a difference for future students,” said Cole. “I want to be able to inspire students the way the professors in the College of Education have inspired me to not give up, and whatever I do—keep learning.”
Outside of the classroom, Rock has been instrumental in restructuring her department’s clinical program to increase students’ teaching exposure in partner schools. She also has served as president of the North Carolina Professors of Social Studies Education and a University Faculty fellow at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
After completing a bachelor’s degree at UNC Charlotte, Rock earned a master’s and Ph.D. from UNC Greensboro. She joined the College of Education’s Department of Reading and Elementary Education in 2000.
Rock is currently co-authoring a book “Action Research for Teachers” with Putman; the work is scheduled for publication in January 2016.
Award citations and photos for all 17 award recipients can be found on the University of North Carolina website.