Dr. Amodei is such a personable, inspiring, motivated and dedicated professor at Slippery Rock University. She is always willing help to students be successful and strive at the things they are passionate about. She is currently teaching a section of FYRST Seminar to freshmen, child development, two sections of formal and informal assessment as well as leadership advocacy and program development. She is very proud of her leadership and advocacy class because she feels that one of her projects she has her students working on allows them to see the bigger picture of the education field.
Dr. Amodei said she is “always changing and tweaking, and updating” the class so the students can get the most out of it. She says “the students need to learn to become advocates and think about their roles as leaders.” In the Leadership class, she requires the students to complete an advocacy project, where the students work together in groups to identify an issue that impacts children’s and families or teachers. They decide the issue to advocate for, contact stakeholders, go out into the community, gather information and then complete research. She has the students not only write a paper, but present the material to the class and design artifacts that support what they are advocating for. Dr. Amodei states that this project can be “daunting because it’s so abstract” and it’s not concrete like writing a lesson plan. She says “the students learn a lot and feel confident” about their work. This really allows the students to articulate what really matters. The students are not given a list to choose from because Dr. Amodei allows her students to explore on their own by spending the first week discussing issues in Early Childhood and Special Education as well as using information from the current events assignment in the class.
One student who really inspired her is a junior this year and involved in a student club that she is the faculty advisor for. She is very proud of this student and says “watching her, as seen in other students, evolve into this leader and take on so much responsibility as well as become so passionate about being a professional and a teacher.” Dr. Amodei expressed how hopeful and positive she feels about the future of education and the students as educators.
She loves watching students’ progress and she is able to see this student excel so much. Raising three children with her husband she finds that she does a lot of running around. She has two boys who are both involved in football and a young girl who is involved in cheerleading, tumbling and swimming. She enjoys running as well as reading. She said “I like to read things that are non-academic in nature such as the Hunger Games” when school is not in session because she is able to take a “brain break” from the academic reading during the semester.
She is so proud to be a faculty member and professor at SRU because they “strive for excellence, always looking for ways to continuously move forward, and learning how to serve the students best.” She also stated that she is “impressed with the caliber of colleagues that she works with.”
She got into the higher education field by the opportunities that came her way. She was always working hard, focused on excelling and moving forward as she was a Childcare Director and then approached to take a job with the office of Child Development and Early Learning. She was then able to work with adults and realized she really enjoyed it! Dr. Amodei then received a call from a colleague who she had met through trainings, who was a professor at Grove City College. At that time she had never taught at the college level and her colleague had recommended her to teach her class while she was out on medical leave. She was then an adjunct professor and loved it! Amodei shared that she found her “nitch.” Following that opportunity, she got her doctorate, and said I want to do this! She then worked at other colleges, and when there was an opening at SRU, she went for it because she knew this is where she had always wanted to be. If she could two super powers she would want to read peoples mind because she said its “hard to know peoples intention” as well having never ending energy.
Dr. Amodei was a great professor to interview for the spotlight because she has so much insight, knowledge and information to share and is so nice to talk to. She is a great role model for students to learn from and gain such experience from.
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