Congratulations to Dr. Julie Sorge Way! She is the recipient of the General Education Distinguished Teacher Award for 2025.
Dr. Sorge Way is honored for excellent instruction in ENG 221 (Literature/Culture/Ideas), ENG 222 (Genres), and WGSS 200 (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies). Julie has been teaching as an adjunct instructor at JMU since 2008 and contributes to two different places in the Gen Ed Program: Arts & Humanities: Literature and the Sociocultural Area. Chosen from among eleven finalists (from 40 total nominees), she will be honored later this spring. Find out more about her teaching and research interests here.
This year’s committee was especially impressed with Julie’s creativity, interdisciplinary connections, and high level of student engagement. Observers of Julie’s class commented that her “innovative approach seamlessly connected discussions on critical writing and reading with broader interdisciplinary themes, drawing ties to SCOM, WRTC, POSC, REL, and HIST. Through interactive group work—where students were randomly assigned by major—and a dynamic in-class debate, she encouraged deep critical analysis of issues such as social constructionism, gender, and privilege, while also prompting students to question traditional narratives. The classroom dynamics were encouraging and outstanding, the instructor addressed students by their first name and interacted with them creating a horizontal dialogue that allowed for questions while learning the content presented.”
Dr. Sorge Way will receive a $1500 honorarium and a plaque and will be honored at a special event this spring and at a luncheon for other Provost’s level award recipients.
Julie is the twenty-first recipient of this award, which was established by the Provost’s Office in 2004. Previous Distinguished Teacher Award recipients are: Craig Abrahamson (2004); Carol A. Hurney (2005); Lynn S. Fichter (2006); Jeffrey T. Andre (2007); Michael A. Moghtader (2008); Kit Murphy (2009); John Ott (2010); Carole Nash (2011); Amanda Biesecker (2012); Kristin St. John (2013); David Daniel (2014); Deb Warnaar (2015); Kathleen Ferriaolo (2016); Geary Albright (2017); Claire Lyons (2018), Kimberly DuVall (2019), Michael Trocchia (2020), Graceful Pivots (2021), Chris Bachmann (2022), Masoud Kaveh-Baghbadorani (2023), and Martin Cohen (2024).
