Irvin Tankersley Wins Honors Program Teaching Award

Professor Irvin Tankersley has won another award for his excellence in teaching. Each year, honors students from across the University of Memphis campus have the opportunity to nominate a professor for the Honors Program’s Excellence in Honors Teaching Award.  This is an award that that allows students a chance to honor an effective and imaginative professor who has taught an honors seminar during the course of the academic year.

In nominating him, students praised Prof. Tankersley's ability to explain difficult concepts clearly, his good sense of humor, his sense of organization, and his friendly and approachable personality. One student said, "I can tell he really enjoys teaching and does not find it a burden to have face time with his students." Another wrote, “Prof. Tankersley instructs with the fullest intention of helping students comprehend the material.”

According to his students, Prof. Tankersley’s ACCT 3130 Legal, Social, and Political Environment of Business is rigorous and challenging, but he manages to make learning the material more entertaining than drudgery for his students.  For instance, he routinely invites guest speakers to his class (e.g., Tennessee Chief Justice Janice Holder) to enhance and enrich the course material. 

Prof. Tankersley is always available to advise students.  In the words of one of his students in ACCT 3130, "I feel that he is one of the professors that I will be able to come back and meet with even though I will no longer be his student."

According to Dr. Melinda Jones, Director of the Helin Hardin Honors Program, "It is instructors like Prof. Tankersley, and the others who students nominated, that make the Honors Program a success."

Congratulations and thanks, once again, to Professor Tankersley.