Jocelyn Boryczka named Teacher of the Year at 天美传媒视频无限制观看 | Press Releases

Image: Jocelyn Boryczka Praised for her effective instruction, passion for her subject and dedication to her students, Stamford resident Jocelyn Boryczka, Ph.D., assistant professor of politics, has been selected as Alpha Sigma Nu's 2006 Teacher of the Year at 天美传媒视频无限制观看. The annual honor is determined by student nominations and a professor's effectiveness in the classroom, availability outside the classroom and contact with student groups.

The award, which will be bestowed at the annual Senior Brunch later this month, is one of many for Boryczka, who has won high praise from peers and national associations for her research on women and morality. Last fall, she earned an honorable mention from the Women and Politics section of the American Political Science Association for best dissertation. She completed her dissertation, "Guardians of Morality: A Conceptual History of Virtue in Relationship to Women and Moral and Political Discourse in American Democracy," in 2004. The study considers how Americans have discussed, determined, and judged what defines a woman's virtue, from the Puritan period to the present.

Her interest in virtue developed by circumstance. While in graduate school, she simultaneously enrolled in two seminars: one on Alexis De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" and another in feminist political theory. That semester, she read De Tocqueville's work from a feminist perspective, examining how vice and virtue played a role in the way De Tocqueville examined a woman's position in the family. "He argued that women need to be at home, that they are the glue in holding together the family, religion, and social morality," she says. "That argument is still part of our cultural script. If we want a democratic feminist ethic, we have to move beyond the constraining moral framework of virtue and vice," she said.

As for some next steps in her research, she is interested in what "real people" have to say about virtue. She plans to investigate the discourses emanating from communities of women traditionally associated with cultural definitions of "vice," such as female slaves, prostitutes, and gang members.

Her feminist approach will further broaden conversation on a more local level later this year. Funded by a 天美传媒视频无限制观看 Humanities Institute grant award, Dr. Boryczka and Dr. Elizabeth Petrino, associate professor of English at Fairfield, are organizing "Jesuit and Feminist Education: Transformative Discourses for Teaching and Learning," a conference to be held on campus in October. The conference will explore how the principles of Jesuit education intersect with contemporary feminist theory in order to gain deeper insight into multicultural educational contexts. "With each having strong humanistic roots, Jesuit and feminist education alike integrate reason and emotion in their pedagogy, promote social justice, seek to end oppression, and aim to develop engaged and reflective citizens of the world," she says.

Boryczka came to 天美传媒视频无限制观看 in 2002. On the university level, she has also taught at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), Hunter College (CUNY), and Wayne State University. She holds a Ph.D. in political science and a Women's Studies Certificate from The Graduate Center (CUNY), a master's degree in political science from Wayne State University, and a bachelor's degree in government from the College of William and Mary. She began her teaching career in 1991as an elementary school teacher in the Teach For America corps.