Montecinos receives Excellence in Teaching Award

Verónica Montecinos, professor of sociology at Penn State Greater Allegheny, has received the Alumni/Student Award for Excellence in Teaching.  She also was named a 2013 Penn State Teaching Fellow. According to a news release from the Penn State Alumni Association, the award was established in 1988 to honor distinguished teaching and provides encouragement and incentive for excellence in teaching. Recipients are expected to share their talents and expertise with others throughout the University system during the year following the award presentation.Montecinos joined the campus faculty in 1990. She also has served as discipline coordinator for the Social Sciences and Education for Penn State's 14 campuses and is the International programs coordinator at Penn State Greater Allegheny. Montecinos's research has focused on democratization, technocracy and public policy, the history of economics and economic ideas in Latin America, and gender politics. She is the author of "Economists, Politics and the State: Chile 1959-1994" and co-editor of "Economists in the Americas." Montecinos earned her undergraduate degree from the Catholic University in Chile. She holds masters of arts degrees in sociology and political science and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh.Montecinos’s teaching emphasizes the importance of internationalizing the curriculum. Nearly 10 years ago, she initiated the Teaching International program at Penn State Greater Allegheny. This multidisciplinary initiative aims at strengthening the intellectual climate of the campus, educating students about trends of global significance through the study of various countries and world regions. This program has developed into a model of global education based on course lectures, class projects, student research, public debates, service learning activities, theater productions, films and guest lectures.