Miami University

Miami teaching award goes to Timothy Melley

01/06/2003

Timothy Melley, an associate professor of English, was awarded the E. Phillips Knox Teaching Award at Miami's fall commencement Dec. 13.

The $3,000 award was established by E. Phillips Knox (Miami ’68) to recognize creative, innovative and engaging teaching methods at the undergraduate level. Miami’s committee on the enhancement of learning and teaching selected Melley for the award.

Melley joined Miami’s faculty in 1995. Since that time he has designed and taught 18 different courses in a range of areas - from literature and creative writing to American studies and cultural theory. He has worked one-on-one with many undergraduates, directing independent studies projects and honors theses and working with University Summer Scholars.

He has played a major role in four important curricular initiatives at Miami, including working with other faculty to redesign the department’s literature curriculum as well as currently working on the redesign of the American Studies program. He has been involved in the honors program’s effort to develop new first-year writing seminars and, as a Selwyn Bye Fellow at Cambridge University, developed the template for a credit-based honors seminar.

Melley’s teaching is based on a philosophy that seeks to develop self-confident, independent thinkers, who “are able - long after they leave my class - to make sense of cultural media because they have ceased to be passive ‘consumers’ of information.”

Melley earned a bachelor’s degree at Amherst College, a master’s at Cambridge University and master’s degrees and a doctorate at Cornell.

Past winners of the Knox Award include Osama M. Ettouney, manufacturing engineering, 1995; Donald Kaufman, zoology, 1996; Steven Bauer, English, 1997; Glenn J. Platt, economics, 1998; Claire Boge, music, 1999, Joan Fopma-Loy, nursing, 2000; and Kay Snavely, management, 2001.