Campus Connection

Third in a series of profiles on this year’s Eagle Teaching Excellence Award winners

Six UW-La Crosse faculty members are being recognized for excellence in teaching. They are the 2017 Eagle Teaching Excellence Award winners. This year the Provost Office received approximately 800 teacher nominations from UWL students. A UWL committee selected the winners. Winners were announced at the end of spring semester and as part of spring commencement. They will be recognized among colleagues at the Chancellor’s All-University Address in fall. This year’s winners are: Gwen Achenreiner ~ Marketing Rita Chen ~ Education Studies Faye Ellis ~ Biology Gary Gilmore ~ Health Education/Health Promotion Brad Nichols ~ Art Lindsay Steiner ~ English Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of short profiles recognizing the six faculty to receive the Eagle Teaching Excellence Award.

“Dr. Gilmore had a structure to his course that kept everyone engaged. You would come to class able to anticipate what was going to be learned. He would always stretch expectations even further, making everything we did in class and everything he said, something of meaning.” -Anonymous

Gary Gilmore, professor, Department of Health Education and Health Promotion and director of Graduate Community Health and Public Health Programs Years at UWL: 43 Teaches: As a public health epidemiologist and public health educator, I have developed and teach the following courses:

• Undergraduate Epidemiology and Disease Prevention
• Graduate Epidemiology and Public Health Issues
• Graduate Public Health Administration and Organization
• Health Education Responsibilities, Competencies, and Certification

I serve as the advisor for all graduate candidates in our nationally-accredited Master of Public Health (MPH) and Master of Science in Community Health Education (MS-CHE) Programs. I am on the graduate faculty, and I chair graduate thesis research and also graduate projects as capstone experiences. I infuse insights and examples from my national and global public health experiences (e.g., from serving as a Fulbright Scholar at the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Calcutta, India, 1999-2000) into my classes and mentoring roles and responsibilities. History: Prior to teaching at UWL, I was a public health practitioner in the following positions:

• Public Health Epidemiologist and Public Health Educator for the Bergen County Health Department, Bergen County, New Jersey.
• Preventive Medicine Specialist at the Preventive Medicine Activity, United States General Leonard Wood Army Hospital, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  I served as the Supervisor of the Environmental and Statistical Section of the Preventive Medicine Activity. I was awarded the U.S. Army Commendation Medal in Preventive Medicine.
• My first epidemiological article was published in Military Medicine in 1971 addressing the preventive measures used at Fort Leonard Wood in controlling meningococcal disease prior to the advent of an efficacious vaccine.
• The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Lecturer teaching Personal and Community Health courses.

Favorite part of teaching: My favorite part of teaching is the facilitation of discovery among the undergraduate and graduate students, whether that occurs in the classroom, through community-based site visitations, advising Thesis and Graduate Project investigations, or serving as a faculty mentor for undergraduate research projects conducted in the U.S. and globally.  In class, I use a Socratic teaching style by providing Public Health context as a starting point, and then raising a series of sequential questions for the students to ponder and respond to.  My greatest joy comes from students fully engaging in discussions, while learning and practicing public health skills that will serve them for a lifetime in their careers and communities.