Two UMGC faculty reimagine access, feedback, and connection
Teaching in an online environment, like the one at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), presents a unique challenge: How do you build genuine relationships with students you may never meet face to face?
Two faculty members in UMGC’s School of Cybersecurity and Information Technology, Chris Finucane ’09 and Beate Kinzel, each found their own answers, and their students have taken notice. This year, both were nominated by students to receive the Stanley J. Drazek Teaching Excellence Award, which recognizes the university’s highest teaching accomplishments.
Chris Finucane: Thirty years in the classroom and still adding a personal touch
Chris Finucane did not set out to become a professor. His career began in uniform. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1987, eventually rising to the rank of captain, and spent years managing large-scale information technology (IT) infrastructure for the military before pivoting to a civilian career that has taken him through some of the federal government’s most demanding technology roles. He’s currently a senior data analytics IT specialist at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Inspector General.
For three decades, though, teaching has been a parallel avocation, and in 2011, Finucane joined UMGC, where he teaches cybersecurity courses including CMIT 425 Advanced Information Systems Security (a prep course for the Certified Information Systems Security Professional exam, or CISSP, one of the field’s most demanding certifications) and CYOP 495, the Cybersecurity Operations Capstone.
His previous teaching jobs mostly centered around in-person training, so the transition to online instruction was, by his own account, difficult. What made it manageable was that he had been on the other side—he completed his own master’s degree at UMGC in 2009 as a distance learner, navigating online classrooms as his students do today. He was determined to address a challenge he saw arise when an instructor didn’t match a student’s level of engagement.
“I remember what it felt like to submit an assignment that was the result of hours of careful research and get no feedback or just ‘nice post,’” Finucane said. “I resolved never to overlook the value of quality feedback with my own students.”
Chris Finucane, Adjunct Professor School of Cybersecurity and Information Technology
Instead, his approach focuses on communication, clarity, and what he calls “over-communication”: making a deliberate choice to say more rather than less in an environment where confusion can fester in silence. He creates supplemental documents to help learners better understand grading rubrics, sends proactive emails to learners who fall behind, delivers mid-semester progress reports, and provides individual feedback on every submission.
But it’s in student Anthony Patterson’s nomination of Finucane for the Drazek award that his commitment truly shines through. Patterson had taken Finucane’s courses and was working toward his degree using a government-issued laptop that blocked the specialized software required for his coursework. The restriction threatened to derail his graduation. Finucane, who was not even Patterson’s instructor for the affected courses, recognized the stakes immediately. He gave Patterson a personal laptop, keyboard, mouse and monitor—and then brought them to Patterson’s door.
“His exceptional act of driving from West Virginia to Maryland to deliver this equipment personally,” Patterson wrote in his nomination, “further underscores his extraordinary dedication and makes him an undeniably outstanding teacher worthy of this recognition.”
For Finucane, the gesture simply reflects a philosophy he traces back to his military service: that a leader’s job is to remove obstacles for the people who depend on them.
Beate Kinzel: Be available. Be relevant. Be human.
Beate Kinzel arrived at teaching through a path that spans continents, disciplines, and decades. She spent 20 years as an Air Force leader, managing weather station operations and supporting military aviation through multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. After leaving the military, she earned three graduate degrees (in psychology, business administration, and curriculum design) and began building a second career as an educator and trainer. After teaching for several years in other locations, she joined UMGC in 2017, teaching courses in information management, data literacy, and program exploration for technology students.
Kinzel’s teaching philosophy can be distilled to three phrases she returns to again and again: be available, be relevant, be human. The words are not decorative; each maps to a concrete practice.
Being available means she does not wait for students to struggle in silence. She sends a personalized welcome email and a recorded introductory video a full week before the official start of each course, walking learners through what to expect, what she expects from them, and signaling from the outset that she is present and approachable. Throughout the term, she holds individual and group Zoom sessions where students can work through assignments in real time.
Being relevant, to Kinzel, means connecting coursework to the actual lives her students are living. Troy Donahue, who works in project management and operations, and who nominated Kinzel for the Drazek Award, described how her data analysis assignments mirrored real workplace scenarios—showing not just how to use Excel, but why the underlying skills matter for decision-making and strategic planning. That bridge between classroom and workplace, he wrote, “reinforced how these skills contribute to my long-term career goals.”
Being human means treating grading as teaching moments. Every assignment comes back to learners with detailed feedback: what was missed, why it matters, how to improve. She describes this not as evaluation but as guidance.
Kinzel’s signature innovation is instructional video. For complex assignments, she records step-by-step walkthroughs that students can pause, rewind, and return to for refreshers. These tools are especially valuable for learners navigating language barriers, working with unfamiliar software, or who simply absorb information better through demonstration than written words. The videos have become so popular that she now shares them with every instructor teaching the same courses.
“Her step-by-step video tutorials transformed assignments into opportunities for discovery, rather than tasks to complete,” Donahue wrote in his nomination. “Because she anticipated questions and explained the “why” behind each step, I found myself not just completing the assignments but truly understanding and enjoying the learning process.”
Troy Donahue UMGC student