Posted 8 a.m. Thursday, May 29, 2025
Heather Linville receives 2025 Eagle Teaching Excellence Award
UW-La Crosse is home to many outstanding instructors who make a difference in students’ lives inside and outside the classroom.
This year, UWL’s Provost Office received hundreds of nominations from students hoping to recognize their favorite faculty. From these nominations, a university committee selected six faculty to receive 2025 Eagle Teaching Excellence Awards.
They are:
- Brad Dobbs, Management
- Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies
- Heather Linville, Educational Studies
- Ryan McKelley, Psychology
- James Peirce, Mathematics & Statistics
- Zachariah Tritz, Microbiology
This is the third of six stories highlighting the winners.
Heather Linville, Educational Studies
Started at UWL: 2014
Courses: I am in the Educational Studies Department, and I teach courses for the TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) program. I prepare K-12 teachers to teach English to those who are not yet proficient in the language. I have taught all the courses in the program, from the introductory course for all educators on how to work with English learners in a general education classroom to the methodology classes about how to teach the English language. I also lead the study “away” TESOL field experience in Puerto Rico each January.
Background: I started my career as a middle school Spanish teacher in Baltimore. I later volunteered teaching English to mostly refugee adults while working as a bilingual legal assistant. After getting my master's degree, I taught English abroad at a binational center in Mexico and as an English Language Fellow in Panama and Indonesia. Back stateside, I was academic director of the English Language Institute and then started my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I next became an instructor in the MA TESOL program at American University and finished my Ph.D. over the next few years before coming to UWL.
Favorite part of teaching: My favorite part of teaching is helping students see themselves as the professionals they are about to become. I treat students as future colleagues and teach to those future selves. My goal is always to draw upon their natural curiosity and encourage them as they make connections that will support them as they enter the professional world of teaching. I love seeing the light go on for students when they are inspired, understand something they previously didn’t, or make connections between something they already knew or experienced and new learning. I also love continuing my own learning as I engage with a new group of students each semester.