“She challenges you,” said former student Katie Christy. “You’re really on this journey with her.”
Oakenfull is being honored today in Washington, D.C., as professor of the year for Ohio. She was nominated by her colleagues and students and selected from nearly 300 top professors in the United States.
The award — the only one recognizing excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring — is given by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, according to Miami. This year, professors were recognized in 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Oakenfull was selected for not only her dedication to her students — which does not end when they graduate — but for her innovative instruction, which she says is designed to prepare and empower them.
“Dr. Oakenfull is exactly the type of educator that higher education needs,” said Carolyn Haynes, director of Miami’s honors program. “She is highly reflective, thoughtful, rigorous and innovative — and she is willing to marshal vast amounts of courage, make herself vulnerable, and take purposeful risks to develop her students into deep thinkers and serious professionals.”
Oakenfull has been teaching at Miami since 1998 and is now associate professor of marketing and director of experiential learning for the Farmer School of Business. Her courses includes capstones taken by seniors, such as Highwire Brand Studio, in which students from a variety of backgrounds compete to create the best solution for a real client — a company that pays a fee to work with the students.
“We’re teaching them how to communicate their ideas, how to support their ideas with research and how to react to other people’s questions,” Oakenfull said.
“I think of what I’m doing in these classes as coaching instead of teaching. I really want students to have the confidence and the belief that they can actually do it on their own. I really do feel that they leave feeling a little bit taller, a little bit stronger and really ready,” she said.
Former student Christy, who graduated in 2005, said Oakenfull remains her mentor even years after she graduated.
“Whether it was championing me during class, writing a recommendation for grad school or coaching me as I made a career shift, Dr. Oakenfull always went above the call of duty with whole hearted support,” said Christy, who is the recruiting director for a global advertising agency in Chicago. “I feel truly luck to have found such a wonderful mentor at such an early point in my career.”
Oakenfull is also chair of the Farmer School’s diversity committee, the chief faculty adviser to the Women in Business student organization and a member of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program.
Her previous honors including the 2009 Richard T. Farmer Teaching Excellence Award, the 2012 Academy of Marketing Science’s Outstanding Marketing Teacher Award and the Marketing Management Association’s 2012 Hormel Meritorious Teaching Award, according to Miami.
She holds a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Houston. Oakenfull, who grew up in England and Ireland, said she considers the award a great honor.
“To be recognized by a national teaching organization and be the recipient for the state of Ohio, I’m thrilled,” she said. “I think it’s a great endorsement of our commitment to teaching at Miami and particularly of my department’s commitment to experiential learning.”
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