Professor wins state award for community service teaching

A U-M professor has been chosen to receive a prestigious state award that recognizes excellence in teaching students the importance of community service.

Michigan Campus Compact (MCC) awarded Maria Cotera, an assistant professor of Latino studies (American culture) and women's studies, the MCC Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award. The annual award is the highest honor MCC bestows on faculty and staff in the state of Michigan.

"I'm extremely proud to have been recognized by Michigan Campus Contact, especially since there are so many hard-working faculty at the University of Michigan who also incorporate elements of community service-learning into their courses," Cotera says. "I think getting out into the community really enhances a student's learning and can potentially be a life-changing experience."

Cotera is one of 33 people statewide to be honored this year and the only person from U-M.

Peers nominated Cotera, who began her U-M career in fall 2001, for the award that recognizes the influence on or engagement of students to be involved in community service or service-learning through modeling, instruction and/or special projects.

Through a partnership with Vista Maria—a social service agency that provides treatment to at-risk girls within the juvenile justice system—Cotera's students can understand the effects of race, gender and class on a young woman's life choices, colleagues say. Her students work with organizations statewide to better understand the issues facing Latino communities.

"Through their interactions with the Latino community, my students learned more about the social realities of Latino youth than they could have ever learned from a textbook alone," she says.

Cotera was honored during an awards reception Feb. 17 at Adrian College as part of the "Ninth Annual Institute on Service-Learning: Deepening the Commitment to Student Engagement through Quality Teaching."

Cotera holds a bachelor of liberal arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin (1986), a master of arts in English from U.T.-Austin (1994), and a doctorate in modern thought and literature from Stanford University (2001). From 1988 to 1992 she worked for the Chicana Research and Learning Center, a non-profit publishing house dedicated to the publication of works by and about women of color.

Her interests include U.S. Third World feminist thought, cultural anthropology, comparative race and gender analysis, early 20th century racial formations, conceptions of race and gender analysis in the writings of women of color from the early 20th century, and women of color narrative traditions.

MCC is a state-level, non-profit organization that promotes the education and commitment of Michigan college students to be civically engaged citizens, through creating and expanding academic, co-curricular and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning and civic engagement.

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