May 15, 2026
The University of Rhode Island Office of Innovation in General Education has announced this year’s faculty members who are being recognized for delivering innovative courses as part of the General Education Program.
This year’s highlighted faculty are: Genoa Shepley and Renee Hobbs, associate teaching professor and professor, respectively, in College of Arts and Sciences’ Harrington School of Communication and Media; Caitlin Nash, associate teaching professor in the Department of Public Health within the College of Health Sciences; and Shane Tutwiler, associate professor in the Feinstein College of Education.
Genoa Shepley
WRT 321G: Writing Disaster: The Ethics of Representation, College of Arts of Sciences
In WRT 321G: Writing Disaster: The Ethics of Representation, disasters are not distant spectacles but rather living narratives that are shaped and retold through headlines, photographs, and even songs. Each representation becomes a lens, bending reality by amplifying certain voices and muting others. For Professor Genoa Shepley, creating this course was not only about helping students understand the way visual rhetoric and meaning making work but ultimately about exploring power: who is seen and who is forgotten when the world is at its most fragile. Throughout the course, students investigate meaning, tracing how epidemics, hurricanes, and technological failures have been constructed in public memory. Through rhetorical analysis, students learn that disasters are deeply entangled with social structures, shaped by inequality, and defined by historical context. Students engage in active inquiry by comparing representations of disaster. By situating the representations within broader social and political frameworks, students begin to uncover how such portrayals influence public perception and answer questions of ethics and power. The course culminates with students extending their analysis into the realm of civic and social engagement, taking a pledge to commit to making a change and developing advocacy materials to create a civic intervention campaign around a current disaster. It is Professor Shepley’s hope that this learning experience “further develops students’ critical thinking in complex ways that will enrich their professional, civic, and personal lives and that they will feel empowered to make change in the world.” By the end, WRT321G transforms from a course into a call to action. Students turn outward, toward their own communities carrying with them a sharpened ethical awareness. They write not to observe disaster, but to challenge and to advocate. In doing so, they learn their own capacity to shape how disasters are understood and how societies respond.
Caitlin Nash
HLT: Perspectives on Public Health in the 21st Century, College of Health Sciences
Public health often operates in the background of everyday life. It is most noticeable in moments of crisis, yet its true impact lies in the systems that prevent crises from occurring. HLT 101G: Perspectives on Public Health in the 21st Century brings this often-invisible field into focus, inviting students to examine how public health functions as a dynamic intersection of science, policy, and ethics. In this course, Professor Caitlin Nash introduces students to the foundational principles, challenges, and policies that define public health practice. The course is grounded in the central question –how do societies protect and improve the health of populations? In answering this question, students engage with current public health issues, examining them through the dual lenses of policy, particularly cost, quality, and access, and ethical responsibility. Through a scaffolded final project that spans the semester, students investigate the implications of public health issues and use an ethical framework to unpack perspectives to advocate for a particular position. Throughout the semester, students are introduced to the multifactorial nature of health by examining the determinants that influence health outcomes. Students explore how environmental exposures, individual behaviors, or structural conditions contribute to health disparities. The course also addresses the ethical dimensions of public health. Students learn to critically assess not only what can be done in public health, but what should be done. For Professor Nash, “watching nonmajors become excited about the information, whether they want to add a minor or just have a better understanding of how these issues are applicable to their lives is very rewarding.” By the end, students are not just studying public health, they are reimagining it. Guided by a social justice framework, they learn to recognize disparities not as inevitable, but as problems that demand intervention.
Shane Tutwiler
EDC 312: The Psychology of Learning, Feinstein College of Education
EDC 312: The Psychology of Learning invites students into the dynamic intersection of mind, method, and meaning, where the science of how we learn becomes a powerful tool for shaping how we teach. From the first discussion, Professor Shane Tutwiler engages his students to look beyond memorization and into the architecture of learning itself: how cognitive development shapes what we know and how teaching can meet learners where they are. For majors and nonmajors alike, this applied course provides a collaborative design space to not only develop knowledge but more importantly, integrate knowledge through writing and reflection. As the course unfolds, learning is revealed to be both deeply personal and profoundly social. Students explore what motivates individuals across diverse backgrounds, recognizing that curiosity, confidence, culture, and context all play critical roles in shaping engagement. They examine how learning experiences can nurture not just academic growth, but also personal, social, and moral development. The message throughout the semester is that learning is less about control and more about creating conditions where learners can thrive. By the end of EDC 312, theory transforms into practice. Students learn to craft measurable lesson objectives and design instruction with intention, using backwards design to align goals, teaching strategies, and assessments. Professor Tutwiler explains, “the job of any teacher is not to pre-label students but rather to get to know them as people and meet them where they are to help them recognize their strengths. Our goal as teachers is to draw out the capabilities of our learners.” Whether preparing to be teachers or simply becoming more effective learners themselves, students leave the course with a toolkit grounded in research and shaped by reflection, ready to build learning experiences that are not only effective, but meaningful places of growth.
Renee Hobbs
COM 250: Digital and Media Literacy, College of Arts and Sciences
Professor Renee Hobbs will tell you we don’t just consume media; we live inside it. Every scroll, stream, post, and headline becomes part of the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. In her course, COM 250: Digital and Media Literacy, she invites students to step outside that constant media flow and examine it with intention, asking how digital culture shapes identity, influences behavior, and establishes what feels normal. The course is built on the idea that understanding media requires more than observation, it requires participation, experimentation, and reflection. Throughout the course, students engage in hands-on assignments, translating analysis into digital expression and reflecting on the process and experience. Whether they are comparing dating apps and how they promote behavior, creating screencasts that unpack media concepts like agenda setting, or designing an original multimedia research project, students have an opportunity to experiment with various media forms and in the process develop their digital literacy competencies. Through these layered assignments, students come to understand media literacy as both critical awareness and active responsibility. For Professor Hobbs, “what really motivates me is the idea that if people expect media to be better, if they can evaluate quality, then the whole media system is going to get better. That’s my passion project –building an audience that expects more.” Whether crafting persuasive content, analyzing cultural trends, or reflecting on their own media habits, students become more intentional participants in the digital world. Along the way, they build a habit of reflection, questioning not only what media does, but what it should do. The hope is that in the end, students don’t just navigate digital spaces, they engage them thoughtfully, aware of their power to influence culture and shape the narratives that define our time.