Teaching Hub

Distinguished Teaching Fellows 2021–2024

Natalie Adams

Natalie Adams

Distinguished Teaching Fellow

Natalie Guice Adams is a professor in New College with a joint appointment in Social and Cultural Studies in Education in the College of Education. Her research focuses on the intersection of extracurricular activities in school, gender, race, and sexual identity, and popular culture. Dr. Adams formerly served as the Director of New College and the Assistant Director of UA’s Graduate School. She is serving her second term as the Chair of the Board of Directors for the David Mathews Center for Civic Life. In 2021, she was the recipient of the National Alumni Association’s Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award. Dr. Adams has chaired over 20 dissertations and supervised dozens of independent study projects. She coordinates the Levitetz Leadership Program, which annually awards over $80,000 to UA students to develop their research, leadership, and entrepreneurial skills.

Dr. Adams teaches a range of graduate and undergraduate courses, including Social Issues and Ethics, Social Problems-Social Change, Seminar in the Social Foundations of Education, and Church, State, and the American Public School. Dr. Adams’s research on the social and cultural significance of cheerleading in American culture is featured in the highly popular Netflix docuseries Cheer.

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is grounded in the foundational principle of New College: students learn best when they are actively engaged in the creation of their own curriculum, learning, and assessment. However, it is a philosophy I developed in my first career as a middle school teacher. Having a BS degree in English Education and a master’s in Gifted Education coupled with a nine-year stint in a middle school classroom, I have taken many courses in teaching methods, educational psychology, evaluation and assessment, and the social context of learning. My teaching philosophy has changed little from my early days of teaching adolescents because at the heart of effective learning is good teaching, and sound teaching and learning principles transcend age and discipline. In short, my teaching philosophy is focused on students first and foremost and incorporates these simple, but powerful, core values:

  • Different students learn differently.
  • Students learn best when they connect content to personal experience.
  • Students deserve to have a teacher passionate about teaching and learning, committed to helping students thrive, and prepared every time they walk into the classroom.
  • The role of the teacher as facilitator and co-creator of knowledge is to help students think critically and creatively about complex issues and problems. This requires creating a learning environment in which all students feel safe, welcomed, and valued.

My teaching philosophy governs my interactions with students, the content I present, and my teaching methods for every class and group of students I encounter. It requires me to be flexible, adaptable, and self-reflexive because what works with one class one semester may totally bomb the next semester. For some students, I merely need to be the sage on the stage; for others, I must be their nurturing cheerleader and guide; for others, their stern parent and critic, and for some, an avid listener, counselor, and therapist.

Matt LeFevor

Matthew LaFevor

Distinguished Teaching Fellow

Matthew C. LaFevor is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. His research explores agriculture, conservation, and environmental management in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. He regularly teaches courses in World Regional Geography, Environment & Society, Geography of Latin America, and Research Methods & Traditions in Geography. Dr. LaFevor is co-Director of the semester-long study abroad program, UA in Costa Rica: Exploring Tropical Environments (Spring).

He is the Director of UA in Mexico: Exploring Mountains & Agriculture (May), an exchange program. His teaching focuses on experiential learning in the classroom and in ‘the field’ in different domestic and international contexts.

Laura ReedLaura Reed

Distinguished Teaching Fellow

Laura Reed is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Dr. Laura K. Reed is an associate professor of biology, having joined the University of Alabama in 2010. Her research focuses on understanding how evolutionary, genetic, and environmental factors interact to shape complex metabolic traits, including diseases like obesity and type-2 diabetes. Dr. Reed’s academic training prior to coming to Tuscaloosa included a BS in biology from the University of Oregon, followed by a PhD in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Arizona, and an NIH-National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship in Genetics at North Carolina State University. In 2017, she also became the Director for the Genomics Education Partnership, a long-standing national collaboration involving over 170 colleges and universities, which provides authentic course-based research experiences to undergraduate biology students. She is passionate about making scientific fields accessible to students from all backgrounds.

Paul ReedPaul Reed

Distinguished Teaching Fellow

Paul E. Reed, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of phonetics and phonology in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Alabama. His research centers on sociolinguistic variation in varieties of English in the American South, with a focus on Appalachian English. His work highlights how a speaker’s connection to place, what he calls rootedness, helps to explain certain kinds of phonetic variation.

He teaches courses on phonetics, the study of how humans produce speech sounds, and phonology, how our minds create patterns of speech sounds. He has recently designed a course on the intersection of sociolinguistics and speech-language pathology, helping students understand societal sources of language variation.  

Teaching Philosophy 

As a scholar and teacher of phonetics and phonology, I understand my courses require challenging previously accepted beliefs about language and language sounds. To that end, I have structured my teaching around three crucial learning goals, each utilizing technology as a crucial aspect: 1) learning basic acoustic concepts; 2) understanding language variation; and 3) acquiring transferable analytical skills.  

My primary goal in teaching is to help students acquire knowledge about language that they can apply to a variety of contexts throughout their collegiate career and beyond. I try to foster an environment where opinions and perspectives can be shared, yet with the understanding that their perspectives might be challenged as they acquire more knowledge and understanding, and also how to engage with others respectfully and inquisitively.