GSC Associate Professor Pearson Accepted into Governors Teaching Fellows Program

By: Brittany A. Tennant, Communications Specialist
Gordon State College Associate Professor of Theatre Tony Pearson has been accepted into University of Georgia’s Governor’s Teaching Fellows Program (GTF). The program will start this summer and last two weeks.
“I want to be a better professor for my students, and the Governor’s Teaching Fellowship offers a valuable opportunity for focused study on teaching,” said Pearson. “I am excited to have focus on improving what I do in the classroom with a group of like-minded faculty.”
The GTF Program was established in 1995 by Zell Miller, a former governor of Georgia, to provide Georgia's higher education faculty with expanded opportunities for developing important teaching skills. Governor Miller envisioned that this program would address faculty members' pressing need to use emerging technologies and instructional tools that are becoming increasingly important for learning in today's society.
To improve the quality of instruction in Georgia's colleges and universities, the GTF Program assumes the complex challenge of moving college faculty members to the leading edge of instructional practice. To date, more than 75 different disciplines, professions and teaching areas have been represented by the GTF, and they have come to the program from more than 45 institutions statewide: large and small, public and private, everywhere from the northern mountains to the Florida state line and between the Atlantic coast and the Alabama border.
Participants are selected on the basis of their teaching experience, their interest in continuing instructional and professional development, their ability to make a positive impact on their own campus and a strong commitment by their home institution for release time and other forms of support for the duration of their participation in the program. Any full-time, regular faculty member can apply regardless of rank.
Pearson was nominated for this honor after a committee encouraged him to apply for the program earlier this year.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. C. Jeffery Knighton said, “Several years ago, I had the privilege of participating in the Governor’s Teaching Fellows program and found the experience to be transformative regarding my own teaching.
“Now, as Provost, I can say that it gives me a great deal of pride to know that a professor of the caliber of Professor Tony Pearson has been selected to be a Fellow. I hope he finds the program to be as invigorating as I did.”
Pearson will be joining 17 other professionals from around the state of Georgia in the GTF program.
Other Gordon professionals who were nominated and attended GTF in the past include Tom Aiello, 2012-13; Bernard Anderson, 2019; Alan Burstein, 2009; Allan Gahr, 1999; David Janssen, 2002; C. Jeffrey Knighton, 2013; Mark Milewicz, 2011; Andrew Osborne, 2010; Elizabeth Watts, 2012-13 and Douglas Young, 1996-97.