Spring 2020: Jill Fahy - Communication Disorders and Sciences
Ms. Jill Fahy, Associate Professor, Communication Disorders and Sciences was the inaugural recipient of the CHHS Hanner Teaching Excellence Award. Her nominators highlighted Ms. Fahy’s dedication to bringing latest scientific and clinical evidence into her teaching, and her commitment to educating future clinical practitioners to combine evidence-based practice with an empathetic approach toward the clients they will serve. In her chair nomination letter, Dr. Rebecca Throneburg, Communication Disorders and Sciences, states “[Ms. Fahy] is a national and international expert in Executive Function with numerous publications, national, and international presentations. Families travel great distances from Illinois and surrounding states for the thorough diagnostic evaluations performed by Ms. Fahy and her graduate student teams in CDS 5910.”
Students and program alumni acknowledge Ms. Fahy as having played an important role in the development of their critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills. As noted in a joint letter of support from an undergraduate and a graduate student, “[Ms]. Fahy spares no teachable moment as she pushes students to justify, clarify, and specify their responses to her questions in class; she prepares her students to professionally articulate defensible clinical conclusions to the entire spectrum of individuals we will eventually communicate with- from neurologists to patients and families.” Graduate students who benefit from Ms. Fahy’s teaching and mentorship in medical-based speech-language pathology courses are consistently selected for competitive interview-based medical internships throughout the country.
About the Hanner Teaching Excellence Award
Established in the College of Health and Human Services during the 2019-2020 academic year, the Hanner Teaching Excellence Award celebrates and honors consistent excellence in teaching. Nominees must be full-time faculty (tenured, tenure-track, or annually contracted faculty) with at least three consecutive academic years of employment at Eastern Illinois University, and who have not received the award previously. The CHHS Scholarship and Achievement Committee, with faculty representation from each academic unit in the college, reviews each nomination and forwards a recommendation to the Dean’s Office for consideration.
The award is made possible through the generous support of Dr. Mary Anne Hanner, former Dean of the College of Sciences, and her husband, Dale Hanner.