Dr. Traci Currie is the 2015-16 Collegiate Lecturer at UM-Flint

Per a communication from Barbara Dixon, Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan-Flint:

2015-16 Collegiate Lecturer Announced

Consistent with the LEO collective bargaining agreement, criteria for the Collegiate Lecturer Award includes status as a Lecturer II or IV, ten years of service, and successful completion of two major reviews.  More importantly, candidates must be nominated based on exceptional teaching and/or exceptional service or other contributions to the University. 

I am delighted to announce that the 2015-16 Collegiate Lecturer Award recipient for the University of Michigan-Flint is Traci Currie, Lecturer of Communication and Visual Arts, College of Arts and Sciences.

Traci received her B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1996, and her M.F.A. in Film Studies and Ph.D. in Media Studies from the Ohio University in 2000 and 2003, respectively.  Traci joined the University of Michigan-Flint in 2004 as a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Visual Arts, and concurrently served as an instructor in English and reading comprehension for the School of Health Professions and Studies’ Health Career Opportunity Pre-College (HCOP) Program and Future Nurses Institute during 2006-08 (winter and summer).  She also served as a literature instructor and tutor in the Upward Bound Program at Wayne State University during 2005-06.  Prior to joining UM-Flint, Traci served as instructor and visiting professor at the Ohio University from 2002 to 2004.

Dr. Currie specializes in oral performance, including spoken word, poetry, and public address, especially as these genres of speaking center around issues of diversity and self-identity.  Probably Traci’s most notable service has included her role, since 2011, as Co-Facilitator in collaboration with Flint’s Buckham Gallery, at a weekly spoken workshop at Genesee Valley Regional Center Juvenile Detention Center in Flint.  There she works with young people in the juvenile system on self-expression and writing skills, a program that has received extensive media coverage.

Dr. Currie has been involved in many service activities, too numerous to list, throughout the University and community.  She and her students have appeared in spoken word performances at dozens of University functions, with the most recent being Chancellor Borrego’s Inauguration.  Her teaching is equally impressive, with her Chair describing her as “one of the finest in our department.”  She has recently been asked to teach a pilot course of Public Speaking in conjunction with the reforms of the Promise Scholar Program and now has been asked to expand that service in Fall 2015.

Traci Currie is an exemplary community citizen combining her teaching centeredness with community service in a way that always includes diversity and self-efficacy as she touches the lives with whomever she has contact .

Please join with me in congratulating Traci Currie as the 2015-16 Collegiate Lecturer for the University of Michigan-Flint.