Heather Murray

Background

About Heather Murray

Recipient: 2021 UNG Teaching Excellence Award 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Scholar."Buddhist East Asia: The Interplay of Religion, The Arts, and Politics." East-West Center, Honolulu, HI. 2017 UNG Teaching Excellence Award; 2013 UNG Presidential Innovation in the Classroom grant. As an ESOL/ TESOL certified lecturer of History at the University of North Georgia, I instruct 200 students a semester in American History, History of World Religions, and the history of World Civilizations and am an instructor within the university's Honor's College. Specializing in Appalachian Studies, WWII Social History, Public History, and Museum Studies, I have successfully designed and contributed to oral history projects and exhibits for state and local museums, done voice-over work for professional instructional media, and published works within my fields. Moreover, I have trained secondary-education teachers on how to best incorporate WWII into their learning modules. I faithfully believe that students at any level of education should experience history using all their senses. Lecture should not only use words, but also incorporate unique foods (hard tack), artifacts (Civil War-era cotton cards), cultural paraphernalia (Lotus Shoes from 19th century China), and music. I want my students to "touch history;" to hold actual pieces of history in their hands. To help further this goal, I received the 2013 "UNG Presidential Innovation in the Classroom" grant to design a proto-industrial weaving exercise for my classes as well as for the possible future use by the Georgia Appalachian Studies Center located in Dahlonega, GA. In addition to my classroom responsibilities, I also design web-based learning modules for college-level history classes and am certified as an online instructor at UNG. I am fully trained in D2L, Moodle, Blackboard, WebCt, Angel, and Vista software packages.