CCSGA Grants Four Professors Teacher of the Year Award

Dr. Nickie Coomer, Dr. Santiago Guerra, Dr. Christopher Hunt, and Dr. Leland Tabares were awarded the 2024 Lloyd E. Worner Teacher of the Year Award. This CC Student Government Association (CCSGA) award is given by students to professors based on their exceptional qualifications, intelligence, and care provided to students.

The selection process for the award varies each year. This year, an ad hoc selection committee of six students received nominations and then voted on the winners. Unlike previous years, CCSGA accepted nominations from non-CCSGA members, though all nominations had to come from current CC students.

“While the process may look different year-to-year, the impact the recipients of this award have on the campus community always remains massive,” says Royce Hinojosa ’26, CCSGA Vice President of Outreach. “On behalf of CCSGA, we would like to extend our highest congratulations to this year’s recipients. Our function not only as a governing body, but also as students and humans, would not be possible without the profound support from these teachers. Congratulations to all winners, again!”

“Receiving this award has had me reflecting on all of the students I have taught in the past 18 years, and all of the places I taught them,” says Dr. Nickie Coomer, Assistant Professor of Education who was recently appointed editor of the Multiple Voices Journal.

“It has not always been an easy ride: in fact the first five years or so were really bumpy as I was trying to figure out who I was both in and out of the classroom,” she says. “I am so grateful for our students here at CC because through their own earnest passion and approaches to learning, they have pushed me to always be intentional and reflective in examining my personal connection to the issues we study. I think CC students are so beautifully exceptional because of the community they build in and outside of the classroom by pushing each other to make this place ‘deeply good,’ as Colleen Campbell ’23 once said in class, and I am so grateful and humbled to be seen and honored by them in this way.”

Coomer’s advice to students is to take care of each other, and that kindness can be deeply radical. “It doesn’t have to look or feel nice,” she says. “But I really think that confronting truths together and then seeing each other through it is some of the most powerful, transformative work we can do in our daily lives.”

“To be chosen by students as a Lloyd E. Worner Teacher of the Year is one of the biggest highlights of my time at Colorado College,” says Dr. Christopher Hunt, Assistant Professor of Religion. “I love being in the classroom, and teaching is a life-giving experience for me. Knowing that the students value my classes means more to me than I can articulate.”

If there was one piece of advice that Hunt could give his students, it’s to remember bell hooks’ words that education is ‘the practice of freedom.’ “In other words, education is about liberation,” he says. “However, that liberation is not just for ourselves, but what we do in the classroom should translate into just action in the world.”

“As the college’s first tenure-track professor specializing in Asian American Studies, I not only appreciated that the students found value in me and my teaching, but I also felt that receiving this award was particularly meaningful for the ways that it signified the importance of Asian American Studies here at CC,” says Dr. Leland Tabares, Associate Professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies.

Tabares’ advice for students is to always ask questions and to not be afraid to speak up in class. “As educators, we want to hear where your passions and interests lie,” he says.