The University of Georgia College of Public Health would like to congratulate Kerstin Emerson on two teaching awards, highlighting her dedication to students and the future of public health. Emerson received both the Teaching Excellence Award for the college and the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education for the UGA Graduate School.
“It is an honor. I’m super passionate about teaching, and I have the world’s most supportive colleagues,” said Emerson. “Having a recognized award just kind of solidifies the support that I’ve always had.”
Kerstin Gerst Emerson, 2026 Teaching Excellence Award & Dean’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education recipient
“Dr. Emerson’s commitment to excellence in teaching is truly remarkable. She is unfailingly dedicated to guiding students toward academic and professional success while being keenly aware of their well-being,” said Stephen Correia, director of the Institute of Gerontology. “She is highly valued and respected by the faculty at the Institute of Gerontology for her expertise in course design and effective pedagogy. As if that weren’t enough, Dr. Emerson masterfully shepherds the growth of the Institute’s curriculum.”
Emerson has been teaching for more than a decade, currently serving as a clinical professor at the Institute of Gerontology and in the Department of Health Policy & Management. Her undergraduate and graduate courses cover a wide range of topics focused on gerontology, from comparing aging across the world to examining the experiences of death, dying, grief and loss.
“To me, success is when students take my material for my class and put it into their own private lives or their personal or their professional lives,” said Emerson. “The content, the skills you’re teaching, that they’re using it, and they’re thinking about it, and they’re bringing it home to their loved ones. That’s amazing.”
Emerson isn’t just passionate about the content she teaches; she’s also always looking for innovative, unique ways to keep her students engaged. One way is to embrace AI.
“One of the assignments in my undergraduate class is they do a role-playing exercise where AI is the nursing home administrator.” Emerson said. “The students are the daughter-in-law of a loved one who’s having challenges in a nursing home.”
She’s also testing an alternative system when it comes to grading her students.
“I’m trying ‘ungrading,’ where students assign their own grades,” said Emerson. “It’s not so much of trying to get to that 95 because then it becomes an A. Instead, it’s, ‘Did I meet the learning objectives?’ They get questions along the way of, ‘Did you put in your effort? Do you understand these concepts?’ And if not, let’s keep working at it because that’s really the goal in teaching.”
By Mackenzie Patterson
