Bi-Annual Faculty Instructional
Excellence Award of 2022
Three members of the ANU faculty — Dr. Mary Tan, Dr. Karyn Mathura-Arthur, and Keegan Gay — have been named recipients of our Semi-Annual Faculty Instructional Excellence Award of 2023. Program chairs, deans, and direct managers undergo the nomination process twice each year, seeking individuals who embody ANU’s values. Nominees must display a commitment to teaching and their students, an engaging, encouraging, active teaching approach to ensure students are intellectually stimulated, the ability to effectively communicate with students, and a positive, lasting impact on students. Earning this award is how we recognize members of the faculty who embody these ANU values.
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Dr. Mary Tan (nominated by Dr. Marie-Bernard Lazare, Dean of Nursing):
Dr. Mary Tan earns her Faculty Instructional Excellence Award for her continuous and tireless dedication to teaching and positive inclination and support to the innovative goals of the institution. She brings a thoughtful and considerate approach to student success without minimizing student responsibility and accountability to the learning process. Whether it is an academic performance irregularity that arises with an undergraduate nursing student, or a student in the MBA program, Dr. Tan will find the appropriate corrective method to encourage and redirect the student.
Dr. Tan is a dedicated and hard-working employee who strives to keep pace with innovation. For her, a device like Oculus Quest 2 for simulation teaching is not meant to intimidate her, but it is rather a challenging tool that can be learned with more time to understand and practice its process. That’s exactly what she did. Dr. Tan is a valuable asset to our nursing program.
Dr. Tan’s experience is extensive and diverse – including management, and clinical and didactic teaching in undergraduate to doctoral programs. She has a proficient all-around management practitioner with an applicable background and exceptional leadership, communication, presentation, and team-building skills. Dr. Tan has more than 20 years of solid and hands-on management and teaching skills. Her familiarity with online policies and procedures and accreditation policies, both state and proprietary universities will be valuable to continued success, growth, and positive student outcomes. She holds a Master of Nursing in Education degree and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Clinical Health Sciences.
Dr. Karyn Mathura-Arthur (nominated by Lyndsey Obringer, Interim Dean of Business and Accounting):Ìý
Dr. Mathura-Arthur joined Â鶹Éç in 2020 looking to bring her corporate teaching and training experience to make the jump into teaching in higher education. Since starting at ANU, Dr. Mathura-Arthur has been instrumental in delivering a high-quality graduate level experience to our students. She has consistently shown her commitment to student success and supporting our students with learning strategies that fit their needs. She has used her time at ANU to teach our students the power of networking and has since hired two ANU graduates.
What started as Dr. Mathura-Arthur’s first academic teaching opportunity has led her to develop a love of the process especially at Â鶹Éç. She came to the US as a foreign student from Trinidad and Tobago but ended up making it her home for the past 30 years. This experience has allowed her to relate well to both the international and American student body found at ANU.
Dr. Mathura-Arthur earned both her undergraduate degree in Communication Arts and her Doctor of Education in Innovation and Leadership from St. Thomas University. Her MBA is from the University of Phoenix completed at the campus in Vancouver, BC. Before arriving at Â鶹Éç, Professor Mathura taught in corporate settings throughout the US and internationally. She currently works for a Fortune 50 organization but has been a management consultant and managed two businesses of her own. She teaches Managerial Economics, International Finance and Operations Management among other courses.
She is an Agile implementation leader with experience in Operational Excellence, Continuous Process Improvement, Business Transformation, Process Engineering, Robotics Process Automation and Organizational Change Management across multiple industries (Banking, Insurance, Healthcare, Telecom, Government, Retail etc.). Winner of numerous accolades to include a Vision Award and Caribbean Book of the Year Author for Trinidad Transcending Time: 150 Years After Cazabon’s 1857 Album of Trinidad, she currently continues to write articles on Leadership for different publications. She also published a children’s book, Trinidad Treasure Hunt.
Keegan Gay (nominated by Patricia Vander Hoff, Program Chair of Medical Billing and Coding; Health Information Management):
Keegan has constantly gone above and beyond in his role of adjunct instructor for the HIM program. He has introduced his students to additional classroom information (his uses of Meditech) and scaffoldings to assist his students in achieving their academic goals. He provides outreach to all his students to encourage them to stay on track. Keegan has developed ways to enhance the courses (AHIMA VLAB assignments) he teaches to broaden the student’s education and help them exceed in reaching course outcomes. He is a professional and knowledgeable team member. He has also grown within his own personal professional journey within the HIM profession with additional coding credentials.
Keegan has taught for ANU for a year and a half. His dedication to actively engaging with students from Intro to HIM to Advanced Coding, along with his continued support of other HIM faculty with his knowledge, goes above and beyond expectations.
Keegan is also a coding manager for a health system based in Savannah, Georgia. This management role has given him many real-world experiences to incorporate into his classes. He has been in the HIM field for seven years, with degrees from Ferris State University and Central Michigan University. He has worked in other positions as a medical coder and coding supervisor. Keegan likes to visit the different attractions throughout Savannah in his spare time. The city is steeped in history and tradition. Baking has become a new hobby for him that started during the pandemic. Keegan enjoys the flexibility and growth that ANU provides. Witnessing many students start and finish the program has also been very rewarding.
