Janet Krauss is a poet, a Bridgeport teaching volunteer and a Boston native.
And after last month, Krause became Fairfield University’s 2005 Adjunct Teacher of the Year.
Krauss received the award from Academic Vice President Orin Grossman on Feb. 14, and she is excited about the opportunity to represent her department.
“I am thrilled to get the award,” she said. “I also feel proud to represent my adjunct colleagues in the English department, a group as devoted as I am to nurturing our students.”
Krauss teaches core classes such as Composition and Prose, U.S. Diversity-based courses and Introduction to Literature. She also teaches Poetry Writing I, Creative Writing, Understanding Poetry I, Spirit of Place and Independent Study courses in writing fiction or poetry.
Honing her love for English by reading novels, poetry and non-fiction, Krauss graduated from Girls’ Latin School in Boston. She then went on to receive her Bachelor of Arts in English and American Literature from Brandeis University.
She got her Master of Arts in American Studies with a concentration in American Literature from Fairfield University and has been adjunct teaching here for 28 years.
Krauss shared her experiences at Fairfield.
“My students mean a lot to me. We share new ideas in our classes, and I enjoy planning lessons that generate discussion and motivate my students,” she said. “They challenge me, and I them. Teaching is a staple in my life.”
The Adjunct Teacher Award is a brand new award which was first given out last year, according to Grossman. “It was established by an anonymous donor who wanted to make more visible the contributions of our excellent adjunct faculty,” he said.
According to a university statement, the Adjunct Teacher of the Year award is chosen by a group of faculty and administrators including the academic vice president, the director for the center of academic excellence, winner of the award from the previous year, the Alumni Teacher of the Year, and others.
Last year, the award was given to Adjunct History Professor Elizabeth Hohl, said Grossman.
“Professor Krauss won this award because of her remarkable dedication to the students in the English department over many years, and I am very pleased that she has received this recognition,” said Grossman.
Nicole Cappiccille ’06, currently in one of professor Krauss’s poetry classes, believes that professor Krauss is well deserving of this award.
“I think it’s wonderful that she has won this honor,” she said. “She is such a dedicated teacher, [and is] always encouraging her students to strive for their best, whether it be with their writing skills or outside the classroom.”
Cappiccille believes it is the one-on-one attention that Krauss grants to all her students that sets her apart from other professors.
“She invests a lot of her personal time with her students, meeting with each of them individually in her office each week.”
In fact, it is the time Krauss spends with students that make her feel rewarded in her job everyday.
“I have felt that my students have given me the award all these years because of the rapport we’ve built between us and our working together to understand the material I present, to understand issues of racial conflicts, family dynamics and human rights and how to use the English language to create poems and stories,” she said.
In addition to her work at Fairfield, Krauss also keeps busy organizing literary events of local authors at Harborview Market in Black Rock, and as been teaching at St. Basil College in Stamford for the past 26 years.
When asked about the future, Krauss simply said: “I want to keep doing what I’m doing.”
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