By Carrie Click
Nominated for their teaching excellence as well as their efforts to extend themselves well beyond their roles as classroom educators, Sharon Aguiar and Hana Forest have been named, respectively, 2016’s full-time and adjunct campus Faculty of the Year at Colorado Mountain College Summit County.
Each year students and faculty at each of Colorado Mountain College’s campuses and its online learning department nominate adjunct and full-time faculty members for Faculty of the Year awards.
Aguiar earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master’s degree in multicultural, bilingual and English as a Second Language education from the University of Colorado Boulder. She spent nearly a dozen years teaching English abroad and at the Summit School District prior to becoming an ESL faculty member at CMC. On nomination forms, Aguiar’s peers described her ability to connect with and support her students to reach new academic standards and life goals.
Aguiar noted how much she appreciates teaching at Colorado Mountain College. “I am fortunate to work with brilliant, talented and inspiring students and colleagues every day,” she said.
Aguiar’s fellow award recipient, adjunct instructor Hana Forest, who also teaches ESL at the college, noted Aguiar’s skill at bringing out the best in her students.
“She makes sure that all of her students are 100 percent encouraged to overcome their unique, individual impediments in learning,” Forest wrote in her nomination of Aguiar. “She is the ultimate educational and life coach to them all.”
Multiple degrees, still learning
In addition to teaching ESL, adjunct honoree Forest also teaches mathematics at the college. Laura Sweatt, who was on both the Dean’s and President’s lists before graduating in 2016 with an Associate of Science degree, explained the impact that Forest’s teaching has had on her.
“She is by far the best math teacher I’ve ever had,” Sweatt wrote in her nomination of Forest. “I truly love math because of Hana.”
“I would like to thank my students for nominating me for this award,” said Forest. “I have been very lucky to work with a great number of amazing adult learners who have inspired and motivated me to become the teacher who I am today. I have learned from them as much as they have from me.”
Forest studied at Masaryk University Brno, in the Czech Republic. She has a doctorate in philology (English language), a master’s in upper secondary teacher training (English and mathematics) and a bachelor’s in financial management, and has worked at CMC since 2002.