Outstanding Teacher Award

Antoinette Martinez

2007-08

Department of Anthropology

A. Martinez

Like many other excellent faculty on this campus, and in the department of Anthropology, I have been committed to quality education on this campus. The twelve courses I have prepared and taught here at CSU Chico have ranged from general education courses, laboratory and field courses, and graduate seminars, to community venues such as the Anthropology Forum. Most recently I have had the pleasure of introducing students to the prehistoric and historic archaeology of the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. Faculty-student contact through the integration of teaching and research has been demonstrated in students I have sponsored for the Grad Equity Fellowship, BSS student symposia, the statewide CSU research competition, honors projects/papers, professional meetings, the Cassanova pre-doc program, numerous internships at the Northeast Information Center, and over 20 MA theses, including two Outstanding theses in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the university’s Outstanding thesis for Spring 2007. Students are also included in agency cooperative field efforts and graduates are distributed throughout agency offices in the North State.

Twenty years ago when I faced life as a single mom and a school bus driver here in Chico, I took anthropology classes whenever I could. Eventually I earned a BA and applied for an Equal Opportunity Fellowship. The fellowship facilitated acceptance into the graduate program in the Anthropology Department at UC Berkeley where I completed my PhD in 1998.

When I took a tenure-track position here at Chico in 1999 my area of expertise had became contact period archaeology. In North America "culture contact" is usually associated with the period of initial contact between the indigenous peoples and European colonialists, missionaries, traders, and trappers in multi-ethnic or pluralistic contexts. As a minority woman, and anthropologist, my research interests began to center on the role of women as cultural mediators. A 2003-2004 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and draft manuscript Keepers of Tradition: Two Thousand Years of Cultural Continuity, provide specific examples of this research interest.

I guess my most recent teaching philosophy has been one of “transparency.” Rather that worrying about expectations, I try to convey the same motivation and interest in anthropology that I felt when I was a student and hopefully that comes through when I teach.