The APSA Community College Faculty Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor exemplary contributions that advance the multi-faceted goals of community college faculty.
Cammy Shay serves as the Houston Community College Faculty Division Chair of Government, which is made up of 80 full- and part-time faculty members spread across the vast Houston metro area. She serves on the American Political Science Association’s APSA Educate Advisory Board. Additionally, she was a member of the American Political Science Association President’s Task Force on New Partnerships (2018-19). She earned her PhD in Political Science from Rice University.
Citation from the Award Committee:
Dr. Cammy Shay currently serves as the Faculty Division Chair of Government at Houston Community College and teaches American Politics, Texas Politics, Latinx Politics, and Intro. to Political Science courses. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Rice University. Dr. Shay’s career exemplifies all that the Community College Award embodies: her career has been dedicated to empowering students through effective government pedagogy and to increasing the inclusion of community college faculty in the American Political Science Association. She serves on the APSA Educate Advisory Board and was a member of the APSA’s President’s Task Force on New Partnerships (2018-19). Dr. Shay recently helped establish APSA’s 4-year college-to-community college research and curriculum collaboration, Peer to Peer Pedagogical Partnership or P-4, where faculty come together to share research and to create curriculum. P-4 represents what Dr. Shay does best: building bridges for progress based on everyone’s strengths.
Dr. Shay’s research interests and publications are in higher education pedagogy, most notably integrative teaching and learning strategies for online and hybrid environments; she has also published on HIV and civil rights. Dr. Shay has presented her work at professional conferences, including the Midwest Political Science Association, the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, the APSA Annual Meeting, and the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Through her work in APSA and at HCC, Dr. Shay continues to mentor community college faculty by forging paths to participation in the discipline, and she continues to effect change in our democracy by improving government pedagogy for our students.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Veronica Reyna (Chair), Houston Community College; Erich G. Frankland, Casper College; and Sierra Powell, Mount San Antonio College.
