Dawn Pilotti ‘97, art history professor at Fairfield University, was named the 2013 adjunct teacher of the year.
“I was excited and honored, but my students are the reason that I won the award. My students inspire me,” said Pilotti, when learning she had won.
A resident of Bridgeport, Pilotti is also an educator at St. Ann Academy in Bridgeport, where she teaches middle school math and social studies. She is noted for having great teacher evaluations, a strong devotion towards her students and their education and effectively following the Jesuit mission of service, according to a press release.
Ironically, she never thought about studying art until her senior year of college.
A math and secondary education major, Pilotti took an art history class as a core requirement her senior year and “fell in love with the discipline … [and] decided to spend an extra semester here to fulfill the major of art history.”
As her passion about the discipline grew, Pilotti worked to become an educator in the field.
After completing her master’s degree, she taught as an adjunct for the art history program at Fairfield and full-time for the Diocese of Bridgeport at St. Ann Academy, which led to her distinct idea of what being an educator entails.
“It’s about teaching with meaning. The student has to be able to find some meaning or some purpose in what it is you’re teaching them. They have to relate themselves to whatever that subject matter is,” said Pilotti.
Pilotti has been in the Fairfield community for 20 years. While taking classes toward her master’s degree in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, she was the assistant to the director of the Walsh Art Gallery at Fairfield and manager of the art history program’s Visual Resources Collection.
Pilotti is involved with a number of activities at Fairfield and St. Ann Academy. A member of Fairfield’s Creative Life Residential Program, a living and learning program focused on the arts, Pilotti is also a member of the Summer Academic Immersion Program, as well as others within the department.
Director of the Art History Program Dr. Marice Rose, who nominated Pilotti for the award, said, “The art history faculty has learned from her teaching. She’s so innovative. She is bringing that concept that we can all learn from one another.”
Pilotti also brought new programs to St. Ann Academy, such as National Park Service/National Geographic BioBlitz and Free the Children, which gives urban children opportunities they might not have were it not for Pilotti. Last spring, she was invited to New Orleans as an advisor to the National Youth Ambassador for the National Park Service/National Geographic BioBlitz.
“Most of the work I’ve done is student-driven,” said Pilotti about how the programs began. “All of those service projects have come from a lesson in the classroom that inspired a group of students to go out and pick a cause and try to better either their home community or a global community.”
Her work with students regarding environmentalism and the National Park Service earned her the E.O. Wilson Foundation Teaching Champion of Biodiversity. This past week, Pilotti traveled to Fort Collins, Colo. where her students presented their projects to the National Park Service.
When talking about the impact she had on her students, Pilotti said: “I’ve had students who’ve said ‘When I was in your class, I discovered who I was.’ I think that’s extremely important. If you can change someone’s life, you know you did your job.”
Pilotti’s ability to change her students’ lives is evident.
Last spring, her students at St. Ann Academy took a 24-hour vow of silence by avoiding texting and social media to raise awareness about mass media, which was covered by sources such as Cablevision, WTNH and the Connecticut Post.
A month later, Pilotti’s Free the Children program raised enough money to build and open a school in Kenya. The campaign benefitted education in Kenya and Haiti, and it was featured in “60 Minutes” as a model for the United States.
“Her work outside of the classroom is inspiring to all of us. Her latest work with the National Park Service is really interesting,” said Rose. “She’s been working to develop curricula in ways to get students involved in biodiversity and environmentalism.”
In October 2012, Pilotti won the Tim Russert Make A Difference Award, created by journalist Tim Russert to honor educators who have made meaningful differences in their students’ lives. One award is given yearly to a Catholic schoolteacher in the Diocese of Bridgeport.
Overall, Pilotti has one source of inspiration when it comes to being involved with the local and global community: her students.
“A lot of the students who have taken to service learning are students who have come from under-privileged circumstances. I think that just for a student knowing that they can give back is the concept that gives them a sense of worth,” said Pilotti.
“In order to really teach, you have to know who your students are,” she added. “If you get involved with them outside of the classroom, then you can really know who they are.”
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