Susana Cisneros is the Higher Education Teacher of the Year
Excelente Awards
The Excelent Awards is a wonderful event to recognize the outstanding achievements of Latino leaders and their supporters.
Excelente Awards will be presented to Latin American business and service people. Also, one special award recognizes a non-Latin person who has strongly supported the Latino community and another special award will recognize outstanding Latino students.
Teacher of the Year
This award recognizes an exceptional educator who has made a significant impact on the lives of their students. The recipient has shown exceptional dedication, innovation, and a genuine passion for teaching, inspiring their students to reach their full potential.
Susana Cisneros
Susana Cisneros (she/ella) is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish and Affiliate Faculty of Latin American Studies. She teaches elementary, intermediate and advanced Spanish courses, she is currently serving as an advisor for the Spanish Club C.E.P.A. and also leads the Tertulia/Virtulia Spanish Conversation hour. Susana was inducted into the Honors Society of Phi Kappa Phi in March 2021. This is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most selective honors society.
She enjoys creating academic experiences outside of the classroom that students often say are life changing. Susana develops educational partnerships within the local community, including inviting high-caliber guest speakers to the classroom, hosting career panels for bilingual personnel, and organizing tours in workplaces such the Charlotte Mecklenburg County Courthouse, the Camino Community Center, and the Charlotte Bilingual Preschool, among other places.
Susana developed a spring break program in Argentina, a professional internship in the Latino community, and a year-long seminar in collaboration with the Charlotte Teachers Institute. She redesigned three courses to be more interactive and to promote leadership.
Susana is passionate about maintaining connection to the community as seen by her completion of the programs in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) Citizen Academy, Mecklenburg Court College, and the FBI Citizen Academy. Susana, who was a criminal law attorney in Argentina in a past career, also became involved in Citizen On Patrol, a CMPD program, for which she received the Presidential Silver Award, and participated in the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office Citizens’ Academy. She was named the 2015 Volunteer of the Year by the Latin American Chamber of Commerce and won the 2015 President’s Volunteer Service Award. She went on to participate in the Leading Education, Aligning, Developing -Upward Potential (L.E.A.Ding- Up) Program sponsored by the Latin American Chamber of Commerce.
Starting in 2015, Susana became a finalist for the Outstanding Teaching by Part-time Faculty Award by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. In 2017, she was then nominated for the ACTFL Global Engagement Initiative and by 2018 she was the Feature Language for Specific Purposes Educator at the IV International Symposium on Language for Specific Purposes (ISLSP)/CIBER Business Language. In 2020, she was a finalist for the UNC Charlotte Award for Teaching Excellence which is considered one of the most prestigious traditions on campus.
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