2021 Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence

Citation for Adrienne Petty

Professor Petty has established herself as a highly regarded instructional and mentoring force at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and is known for her attentive mentoring and guidance of students. Her specialty is postbellum agricultural policy and daily farm life, with a focus on North Carolina. While the subject matter of her courses is often sensitive and not without controversy, she places critical discussion front and center in her approach to teaching, and is known for opening up spaces the classroom to address topics that our students have sometimes not been able to discuss openly.

Students describe her as an "amazing" and "fantastic" professor, credit her with igniting their interest in history, and note the passion she brings to her teaching. Amidst the trials of pandemic-year teaching and learning, she won high praise for her "masterful" adaptation to online teaching of her summer course in D.C., inviting black scholars, authors, and residents of D.C. to present guest Zoom lectures and, in the words of one student, proceeding with "generosity, flexibility, kindness, and genuine care for her students and their well-being."

It is fitting that she now be recognized with the Arts & Sciences 2021 Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence.