Kruger receives SPHHP teaching honor

Prior to its 31st annual J. Warren Perry lecture on Nov. 12, the School of Public Health and Health Professions honored its 2019 Outstanding Teacher of the Year recipient. The award recognizes a faculty member who has a documented record of teaching excellence.

Jessica Kruger, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, is this year’s honoree.

Kruger teaches courses primarily in SPHHP’s undergraduate public health program. Reading from the nomination, Jean Wactawski-Wende, the school’s dean, said Kruger is “an innovative and enthusiastic instructor who effectively engages her students.”

Kruger regularly receives high marks from her students. For example, 97% of the 262 students who evaluated one of her recent courses said her teaching effectiveness was “excellent” or “very good.”

The nomination for Kruger also noted that she is “always on the leading edge of new technologies and approaches used to engage students.”

These include something called a Catchbox, a throwable foam box with a microphone built in that students can toss around to one another in large lecture halls to ask questions and be heard by all.

She also provides students with video feedback on papers and projects. Students in her 2018 PUB 320 class authored their own open access educational resource textbook on public health.

Kruger also mentors students one night a week at the Lighthouse Free Medical Clinic, which is managed by students from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and involves an interdisciplinary team of students from a number of schools at UB.

“She has done all of this while maintaining an active research portfolio that includes multiple publications on teaching excellence,” Wactawski-Wende said.

Kruger has received several other awards for teaching, including the 2019 Excellence in Instruction Award from the SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology, and the 2019 Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award from the undergraduate Student Association.