Margaret Morgan is a 2009 recipient of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. She will be recognized at commencement, Saturday, May 9.

Established by the Board of Governors in 1994 to underscore the importance of and to reward good teaching across the University system, the awards are given annually to a tenured faculty member from each UNC campus.

Winners must have taught at their present institutions at least seven years; no one may receive the award more than once. Each award winner receives a commemorative bronze medallion and a $7,500 cash prize.

Morgan began her UNC Charlotte tenure as a lecturer in 1987 after completing a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition from Purdue University. She was promoted to associate professor in 1995. Throughout her career, Morgan has worked to facilitate student learning. She championed efforts to improve the curriculum and teaching of freshman composition and implemented new placement procedures for students for whom English is a second language. She organized North and South Carolina writing administrators who now hold biannual meetings. Internationally, she collaborated with colleagues from Germany and Thailand to share information on writing instruction and student support and taught a writing workshop for elementary school teachers in a South African village.

“I teach writing, not how to write stories, or poems or novels, but how to write technical proposals, instructions, arguments about whatever. I teach theories of technical communication and argumentation. Ultimately, because I believe in my heart that language is our soul and we cannot survive at any level (physically, emotionally, spiritually) without it,” said Morgan, who won the University’s top teaching honor this past fall, the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence.

[Campus News, 4/29/09]