The J. Calvin Keene Award is given annually to a faculty member in recognition of the high standards of personal scholarship, effective teaching, and moral concern by which Dr. Keene conducted his career.
Of Regosin’s approach to pedagogy, Schonberg said, “Her students report that their awareness of the complexity of the subject matter in her classes grows exponentially, and the topics about which she teaches are not simple but are often misunderstood to be, and students’ starting assumptions are often freighted with entrenched social understandings that may stand between them and the truth. She asks students to face this challenge head-on, to see the full intricacy of the past and the present, to recognize light even in darkness along with the darkness within light, and to look squarely at their own relationship to academic topics they are discussing in ways they have not done before.”
One of the students who nominated Regosin for this award wrote, “I have taken two courses with her in my four years here and have left both of them feeling like every student needs to take a course with her. When I graduated high school, I had a very narrow view of the subject and didn’t think I liked it. That all changed when I found myself in her courses. She cares deeply about each student, wanting us to succeed in our academic and professional goals and wanting us to feel like we are learning accurately about the world.”
Schonberg also noted Regosin’s achievements as a nationally-recognized scholar of the legacy of slavery in the United States, and detailed the central role she has played in bringing liberal education to incarcerated citizens in our community.
“She has made St. Lawrence University a better place in too many ways to count, notably as Associate Dean for Faculty and last year as co-Chair of Faculty Council in one of the most difficult periods in our recent history. She is an esteemed and cherished mentor, friend, and leader of our community,” he said, referencing her peer support and leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regosin has been teaching in St. Lawrence’s history department since 1997 and was selected by students as the 2022 Owen D. Young Outstanding Faculty Award recipient. She regularly teaches courses in American history, African American history, and American women's history, and has also been an instructor in the First-Year Program. The emphasis of her research in African American history has been on African Americans' transition from slavery to freedom. She’s published two books on this subject—Freedom's Promise: Ex-Slave Families and Citizenship in the Age of Emancipation; and Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files (with Donald R. Shaffer.)
A product of the University of California, Regosin earned her bachelor’s in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Irvine.
