The College of Southern Maryland honored early childhood professor Shaneeza Kazim with the college’s Faculty Excellence Award during its Academic Excellence Award Recognition ceremony on May 8.
The award honors faculty for outstanding achievement in classroom teaching, contributions both to their department and the college, professional development and community commitment.
“Being chosen for this award is an incredible honor and privilege, as I am being recognized by my colleagues for doing the work that I love so much,” Kazim said in a news release. “I know that many of my peers are deserving of this recognition, and I am humbled that I was selected as being recognized for my teaching and focus on student success.”
Kazim began her career at CSM in 2008 teaching continuing education courses. In 2014, she became a full-time faculty member and program coordinator for the Early Childhood Development Program.|
“What makes Shaneeza stand out as a Faculty Excellence award winner is the variety of contributions she has made to CSM, the quality of her work, and the amount of commitment she has to this institution,” CSM faculty excellence committee chair and professor Melanie Osterhouse said in the release. “If Shaneeza is on the project, you can be assured it will be a job well-done.”
“She has a passion for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and structures her classroom according to the universal design for learning, always keeping the at-risk population in mind,” Faculty Senate President George Bedell said in the release. “By modeling inclusivity, her students will have this mindset as they set-up their own classrooms.”
The release added that Kazim has distinguished herself for using her classroom to expand her students’ worldviews, challenging their assumptions to build them into compassionate, inclusive, educators capable of thinking critically about their field.
“I recognize that students do not arrive in my classroom as blank slates and do carry with them biases about children, education, and those around them,” she said. “Challenging students to enhance their awareness of culture, diversity, language, gender roles, sexual orientation, and other identities is an ongoing experience that occurs in several courses within my program. I always consider my role in orienting students to my discipline while emphasizing what it means to be an educated person in early childhood.”
That approach is one that resonates with students, who consistently give her glowing evaluations.
One student said that “professor Kazim was the most information-filled, diligent, concerned, and helpful instructor I have ever had throughout my years of being in college," while another said “[she] connects what we are learning in the class to what’s happening in the world. She is not afraid to challenge [us] to think deeper.”
Kazim is also a member of the college’s DEIB leadership team, having co-chaired the diversity in education committee and the college success for single mother’s project. She co-chaired the first-year experience course and was the coordinator for the course for more than seven years. She also co-chaired the gateway courses community of practice committee, was a member of the college preparedness committee and admissions review board, made videos for the Hawk Set initiative, and has attended the Achieving the Dream conferences annually since 2020. More recently, she has used her understanding of data-informed decision making to help with the Middle States Accreditation Standard 3 Workgroup.
She also belongs to the Academic Learning Assessment Committee where she helps review college programs, trains instructors on assessment, and helps the college develop the process of reviewing programs’ effectiveness.
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