ESOL graduate named state’s community college professor of year
Posted January 25, 2011
UF education alumnus James May (MEd ’99, EdD ’07, ESOL/bilingual ed), a professor at Valencia Community College, has been named the 2010 Professor of the Year by the Florida Association of Community Colleges. May teaches English as a second language at VCC’s east campus.
For his COE doctoral studies, Candace Harper was his faculty advisor and Colleen Swain Packer and David Miller also were on his committee.
May was one of three state finalists who gave oral presentations at the FACC’s recent annual convention in Jacksonville. His winning presentation, titled “Agreeing to Disagree: The Scarier Side of Subject Verb Agreement,” humorously illustrated the challenges of helping non-native speakers grasp the conflicting rules governing subject-verb agreement (he lives, but you live, for example).
“Dr. May proved to be the top choice for each judge,” said Heidi Marshall, vice chair for the FACC Faculty Commission and organizer of the competition. “His engaging presentation offered a fresh approach to teaching subject/verb agreement and demonstrated his expertise in his field.”
Rather than relying on students’ passive viewing of lectures and other materials, May has excelled at facilitating interactive information sharing and collaboration in his classrooms using everything from webcam and You Tube videos, to Google Docs, to content specifically formatted for cell phones and iPods.
May has created a website (http://teachertricks.org) where he teaches other instructors how to incorporate new technologies into their classrooms.
