Alumni Feature: Rebecca Maatta Wins Duquesne University’s Highest Teaching Award
By Maria Ferrato
In 2021, Carnegie Mellon University alumna Rebecca Maatta, PhD., won three teaching awards, including Duquesne University’s highest award for creative teaching.
Dr. Maatta is a teaching associate professor for Duquesne University’s McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts. She teaches the first-year writing sequence in addition to courses that blend healthcare with literature—like Anatomy I and Healthcare and Literature—for students in both English and health-related majors like physical therapy and nursing.
This blend of coursework was informed by Dr. Maatta’s dissertation and ongoing research in 19th century literature in addition to the teaching and learning of human anatomy by dissection.
The courses, especially Anatomy I, give students from The Rangos School of Health Sciences an insight into a humanities-based approach to health. In fact, The Rangos School requires medical humanities courses for all of its graduates, a unique and particularly in-depth requirement for health sciences schools in the nation.
Anatomy and the Archive, a 300-level writing-intensive class in which students designed a gallery exhibition on the history of women’s bodies in anatomical art, earned Dr. Maatta Duquesne’s highest creative teaching award.
Dr. Maatta received two additional awards for her outstanding teaching in 2021: The McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching and the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Maatta received all three of her degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. She received her BA in English and Creative Writing in 2001, her MA in Literary and Cultural Studies in 2002, and her PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies in 2009.
You can learn more about Dr. Maatta's course in Duquesne University Magazine (Spring 2022).