© University of Pittsburgh Kenneth P. Dietrich School ofarts and Sciences ha Tage 0. Department of Africana Studies omen a 20 Seah Some Set Psourgn PA 15200 ‘neon 08 Maeser214 ra) nal: teat es January 2, 2017 Associate Dean John Twyning Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences RE: Dr. Michael T. Tillotson, Bellet Award Nominee Dear Dean Twyning: It is a wonderful accolade that one of our faculty members, Dr. Michael T. Tillotson, has been nominated for the Tina and David Bellet Excellence in Teaching Award for 2017. This nomination is well-deserved. You have requested that I assess the nature and quality of Dr. Tillotson’s contributions to our curriculum and to the University. Dr. Tillotson’s record in these areas is compelling in ways very specific to this pioneering moment of reaching in Africana Studies, and it is my pleasure to explain why. ‘The discipline of Africana Studies began offering the terminal degree in 1988 with a single program at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, with its first professionally-trained disciplinary scholars emerging around 1991. The visionary professors who are foundational to the institutionalization of the discipline of Afticana Studies and who trained the first several generations of graduate students in Africana Studies curricula did not hold terminal degrees directly in Africana Studies. It has taken approximately twenty-five years to produce a strong national cohort of professionally-trained Africana disciplinary scholars who, as exemplified by Dr. Tillotson, are now the teachers of a very specific and unified Africana Studies curriculum. The specificity of our department is that it is a national model of a mature, Africana Studies- based disciplinary curriculum. Our curriculum and our vision are sustainable based on a healthy balance between Africana Studies-based disciplinarity and cross-departmental collaboration, of which Dr. Tillotson is a stellar representative. His teaching embodies such multiplicity of expertise. He teaches in Africana Studies, and his expertise in quantitative and qualitative sociological methods and in the history of social inequity sustains a secondary appointment in The School of Social Work. During Dr. Tillotson’s first year in the Department of Africana Studies, which was at the rank of Visiting Assistant Professor, students flocked to his courses, as word of mouth and as his campus presence signaled a truism he teases ~ This isn’t your grandfather's Africana Studies department. During that year, he created the Africana Studies Club and invigorated student interest in attending the discipline’s core annual conference event with the National Council for Black Studies, During this year (and all years after), he volunteered to co-teach the department's capstone Senior Seminarwhich now has an annual public presentation of student quantitative and qualitative research projects. We hired Dr. Tillotson as a full-time Assistant Professor after his visiting year. Dr. Tillotson’s enthusiasm for teaching the discipline is also partly responsible for our 100-seat section of Introduction to Africana Studies that he insists on teaching himself. Dr. Tillotson is aware of his value to the department's recruitment and training of majors, and he prefers the 100- seat section over the 40-seat section because he has excellent skills of classroom management and a talent for energized teaching Dr. Tillotson has a national reputation as a charismatic speaker and as a feacher who, in his owns words, helps students to “gain epistemic fluency in theories, methodologies, ideational frameworks, and conceptual models” that reinforce the specificity of Africana Studies as an intellectual enterprise. This is the sentence he contributed to our department's new uniform description of Africana Studies to be placed on all syllabi. As you can see in an itemization of OMET evaluations on his courses, students are aware that they are learning new, original, organic, and specifically Africana Studies discipline-based approaches to knowledge. ‘This endeavor is worthy of recognition because it represents the most advanced orientation to teaching in Africana Studies. Many universities rely on consortium-style programs and on cross- listings of Black/African themed courses from other departments/disciplines to sustain their curriculum in Africana Studies, That model is a loose configuration that denies students the benefits of becoming master communicators with high cultural competeney and critical depth in the systematic and scientific study of African world experience. In our department's more unified, disciplinary approach to Africana Studies, Dr. Tillotson consistently gives students a high retum on their university investment by teaching them the most contemporary developments in the field as well as how to locate the discipline’s innovation throughout the cultural record that predates the origins of Africana Studies. Dr. Tillotson is one of the department's nationally visible scholars, and this visibility relates directly to his teaching style and scholarship on Africana Studies pedagogy. In my mentoring conversations with him, I have had to share the unfortunate trend that at some universities there is a negative demarcation between scholarship viewed as pedagogy versus that viewed as epistemological research. His response noted that he recognized there was a gap in sources available on reaching in Africana Studies, therefore, he co-published “Applied Africana Studies” (2013) and “Teaching Introduction to Africana Studies: Sustaining a Disciplinary Focus,” (2014) both in the flagship journal of the discipline, The Journal of Black Studies. In addition, his first book, Invisible Jim Crow: Contemporary Ideological Threats to the Internal Security of African Americans (2011), which offers a contemporary analysis of race and policy in the U.S., resonates so much with youth and community activists who desire a critical tool such as his concept of Agency Reduction Formation (ARF), that he is a sought-after speaker. His common- sense communicative style and his research are responsible for consistent invitations to lecture, which is really teaching, at colleges and universities all over the country—in both Africana Studies departments and in traditional disciplines. This visibility based on Dr. Tillotson’s teaching is responsible for his recent selection to serve on the executive Curriculum Committee of the National Council for Black Studi Page |2It has been an easy task to share the nature of Dr. Tillotson’s excellence in teaching, which is reinforced by his high OMET scores and both peer and student teaching evaluations. Naturally, it would be a great credit to the Department of Africana Studies if Dr. Tillotson wins the Bellet Award. More importantly, Dr. Tillotson has a talent for teaching that he enhances with a rigorous and ardent commitment to be well-read, to be well-published, and to be open to debating and engaging competing idea formation. More importantly, students see clearly how his teaching is an invested commitment to their intellectual development and life-career success. Tencourage you to favor Dr. Tillotson’s application for this award Sincerely, Christel N. Temple Page |3