KU faculty honored as 2025 Kemper Fellows for Teaching Excellence

LAWRENCE — Teaching is integral to the University of Kansas’ mission to educate leaders, build healthy communities and make discoveries that change the world. This spring, five KU faculty members were honored with the William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence award, recognizing their commitment and contributions to teaching excellence on KU Lawrence’s campus.

The 2025 William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence recipients:

• Giselle Anatol, director of the Hall Center for the Humanities and professor of English.
• Jennifer Delgado, associate teaching professor of physics & astronomy.
• Sean Gullickson, associate teaching professor of Spanish & Portuguese.
• Eileen Hotze, associate teaching professor of molecular biosciences.
• Pamela Keller, clinical professor of law.

Each honoree received a surprise visit in class or during a departmental meeting from either Chancellor Douglas A. Girod; Amy Mendenhall, vice provost for faculty affairs; or Meagan Patterson, associate vice provost for faculty affairs. These unannounced visits allowed the instructors to be celebrated in front of their students and colleagues.

The Kemper fellowships recognize outstanding KU faculty whose teaching guides students in gaining crucial skills, embracing academic and professional challenges, developing learning strategies and improving long-term success. Each of the five awardees will receive $7,500 from the William T. Kemper Foundation (Commerce Bank, trustee) for demonstrating teaching excellence, innovation and student-centeredness, which is essential to the success of KU.

“Excellence in teaching is central to KU’s mission and integral to our students’ experience,” Girod said. “This year’s Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence recipients include some of our finest educators and mentors, each of whom are worthy of our recognition and thanks. I look forward to celebrating these outstanding teachers at our annual awards ceremony, and I invite our entire academic community to join us.”

The five Kemper Fellows will be honored alongside the winners of KU’s other annual teaching awards at the annual University Teaching Awards event in September.

About the 2025 Kemper Fellows

Summaries below include portions of each fellow’s nomination packet, highlighting their strengths in teaching and mentorship.

Giselle Anatol

Anatol shapes not only the classes she teaches, but also the teaching culture of her department and other units through her leadership of the Hall Center for the Humanities.

Her teaching and student mentorship balances high expectations and rigor with passion, fun and support as she encourages students to extend their learning beyond the classroom through sharing publishing and award opportunities. Students describe her as “one of the most consistently inspiring instructors I’ve had here at KU.” Anatol’s teaching and mentorship have been recognized with multiple awards at the department and university levels, including the Byrd Graduate Educator award and the Mabel S. Fry teaching award.

Jennifer Delgado

Delgado’s students describe her as an exceptional teacher who supports students within and beyond the classroom and makes complex material understandable and enjoyable. Her pedagogy emphasizes student agency and creative projects where students are able to demonstrate mastery of course content in multiple ways. Delgado has significantly influenced her department’s curriculum design, aligning content and skill development across courses. She also supports graduate student instructor training and organizes community events such as “telescope nights,” extending her impact beyond KU.

Sean Gullickson

Gullickson oversees undergraduate degree program assessment of student learning for the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, contributing to the department’s recognition with a campuswide degree assessment award. His expertise has also been shared at the university level through participation in the task force on degree-level learning outcomes, alternative assessment working groups and Mellon Scholars program. Gullickson consistently receives positive student feedback on his innovative approaches to teaching and grading in language learning. Beyond teaching, his positive influence on the culture can be felt within his department through collaborations with faculty and training of graduate student instructors.

Eileen Hotze

According to student feedback, Hotze makes large classes engaging and provides a wealth of resources to aid students in learning. Although she teaches students across a range of majors, they often remark that Hotze believes in them more than they believe in themselves. Her dedication to student success is evident in and out of the classroom through her dedication to student mentorship. Hotze’s curriculum design emphasizes scaffolding and instructional alignment to ensure student success in future courses. She also integrates hands-on research experiences, demonstrating creativity and innovation in her teaching.

Pamela Keller

As the director of the lawyering skills and moot court programs, Keller has been a key contributor to the School of Law’s skills-based curriculum. The programs merge theoretical rigor with real-world application of principles of legal reasoning, legal writing, oral advocacy and professionalism.  Both programs prioritize individualized feedback and mentoring to students. Students noted that Keller “gives incredible, detailed feedback on our writing” and “always works to make students think more deeply about their writing.” In both her classroom teaching and her work as a moot court coach, Keller demonstrates attention to student improvement over time, continuously refining her courses based on student feedback and developments in the legal field.