Maloch Wins College's Highest Teaching Award - July 30th, 2009

The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education has awarded the 2009 Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award to Dr. Beth Maloch, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction’s Language and Literacy Studies area. The award recognizes one faculty member each year who exhibits excellence in teaching and an exceptional commitment to students’ academic success.

“If you’re in this college, it’s likely you’ve heard wonderful things about Dr. Maloch’s work,” said Dr. Norma Cantu, chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. “Students love her and her colleagues are full of praise for her dedication and skill as well. She’s only been in the College of Education for nine years, but she’s pushed herself very hard and accumulated such an impressive body of accomplishments. She definitely goes above and beyond what’s required.”

Maloch teaches undergraduate courses in teaching methods, including Reading Methods, Reading Difficulties and Language Arts Methods and has a reputation for implementing effective instructional innovations in her classes. In several courses she has used video cases and student visits to exemplary teachers’ classes to give her students a better feel for what they will encounter in a class of their own.  She has received two Dean’s Faculty Integration Awards to support her creative use of technology.

In addition to her teaching duties, Maloch’s dedication to the college’s teacher education program extends to include service as a coordinator of undergraduate cohorts. Like many faculty in the College of Education, Maloch believes that the quality of the teacher education program is enhanced and the quality of undergraduate education is elevated when tenured faculty members set aside time to administer the time-intensive three-semester professional development sequence for future teachers.

Maloch teaches graduate classes as well and has designed several new graduate courses, including the Advanced Qualitative Research Course in Discourse Analysis.  She also is a graduate advisor for Language and Literacy Studies and chairs numerous dissertation committees.

At the college and university levels, she has served on a wide array of committees, including the Applied Learning and Development committee, the SACS committee, the cohort coordinator committee, the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and the campus-wide Educational Policy Committee.

Regarding scholarship and research, Maloch’s primary research interests have been related to classroom talk and discussion as well as the preparation of literacy teachers. Working with the International Reading Association’s National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation for Reading Instruction, she completed a three-year study of the preparation of reading teachers in three-year undergraduate programs and was lauded by leaders of the Reading Association for her significant contributions to the study.
Maloch recently completed data collection for a classroom-based study she has been conducting on the use of nonfiction texts in primary classrooms.

"Fifteen years ago nonfiction trade books were much less common in early primary classrooms, partly because there were not as many high quality texts available," said Maloch. "Given the motivation and academic potential of nonfiction, there's now a push to incorporate more nonfiction reading in primary classes and a corresponding push for research on this new trend. I’m interested in how teachers are incorporating these texts in their classrooms and how students learn to read and navigate through informational texts. With the help of one of our doctoral students, Angie Zapata, I have just finished collecting data in three Austin classrooms, observing and videotaping instruction and interviewing students around their work with nonfiction texts.” 

Maloch was given the 2008 Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English for a publication she wrote on the subject of nonfiction text use in primary classrooms. Her scholarship as a whole was honored with the Early Career Achievement Award from the National Reading Conference, the premier reading association for literacy research, and because of her professional stature at a national level, she has been elected to the board of directors for the National Reading Conference.

“Dr. Beth Maloch has had such a remarkable career,” said Dr. Manuel J. Justiz, dean of the College of Education, “and we are so pleased to be able to celebrate her major contributions to the college.  This award is a token of appreciation for the exceptional resource she’s been to both undergraduate and graduate students.”

In addition to receiving the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Maloch has been invited to be commencement speaker at the May 2010 ceremony.

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910