Two professors share a commitment to the individual learner
At first glance, Anita Hanawalt, PhD, and Matthias Regan, PhD, seem to inhabit different worlds. One is retired organist, pianist, and music scholar who has spent decades encouraging students to explore cultural contexts of music they love; the other is a poet and literary scholar whose classroom is built around the written word. But they share the conviction that education is fundamentally a relationship, not a transaction.
Both adjunct professors believe that learning happens when a teacher meets learners where they are, takes their lives seriously, and helps them discover that the subject at hand, whether a jazz standard or a modernist poem, is connected to something they already care about. This philosophy of presence, responsiveness, and genuine human engagement has earned both the 2026 Stanley J. Drazek Teaching Excellence Award at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), the university’s highest faculty honor.
Four decades of drawing learners into the world of sound
Anita Hanawalt has been teaching music in higher education since earning her PhD in Music Cultures in 1983—more than four decades of drawing learners into the world of sound, culture, and history, the last 20 years with UMGC. Since 2002, she has taught exclusively online, earning a place as a pioneer in virtual music education.
In addition to her depth of expertise, Hanawalt was recognized for her instinct for connection. In her own words, she works to "meet students where they are and invite them to walk with me on an educational journey," a philosophy that plays out on a personal level.
When a learner in her MUSC 210, Music as Cultural Expression course mentioned in a discussion that her favorite pastime was watching professional wrestling, Hanawalt didn't offer polite acknowledgement and move on. She told the student about the significance of theme songs for each wrestler's persona, including a link for her to explore it further, turning the interaction into a lesson in music's power to illustrate identity and personality.
That kind of attentiveness shows up through her feedback on assignments. For a multi-week fieldwork project that asks learners to attend a live performance, interview a musician, and develop original research questions, Hanawalt provides feedback at each of four steps rather than waiting until the finished product is turned in. And that feedback, student Kiara Texidor noted in her nomination, wasn't merely a sentence or two.
"She wrote paragraphs’ worth,” Texidor said. “You can tell that she really cares about your work and wants you to succeed."
Hanawalt credits years of experience as a collaborative pianist for her ability to thrive as an online instructor. “As a pianist, I hear the intentions behind a performance, which translates quite well to perceiving intention behind textual communication,” she says.
In addition to teaching Music as Cultural Expression, Hanawalt serves as a prior learning evaluator in music for the undergraduate Course Challenge program, where learners can earn credit by passing the equivalent of a final exam for some courses.
At UMGC and other institutions, Hanawalt has also helped design open educational resources, written for peer-reviewed publications, performed multiple concerts featuring music composed by women, and presented at national conferences on everything from building online learning communities to gender roles in music across cultures. She has also served as an organist for multiple churches over decades in a musical career that has creatively combined theory and practice.
Kiara Texidor UMGC student
Dismantling the myth of the "natural" writer
Matthias Regan doesn’t believe in natural writing skill.
“None of us are born with talent for writing because such a talent doesn’t exist,” he said. “Our ability to write—and all that comes with it, including access to our own thoughts and feelings—is entirely educational.”
This perspective, that the ability to write well is an essential skill that develops through thoughtful repetition, defies the notion that some people are just naturally gifted writers. Instead, Regan strongly believes that writing is a technology learned through practice, revision, and the nurture of a good teacher.
In teaching WRTG 111, Foundations of Writing and Communication, and WRTG 391, Advanced Research Writing, Regan sees learners from every undergraduate UMGC degree program in his classes. His job, as he sees it, is to help learners develop the capacity to evaluate and edit their own work: to become not just better writers, but more self-sufficient ones.
What this looks like in practice, according to one student nominator, who asked to remain anonymous, is “a learning environment grounded on open dialogue, mutual respect, and intellectual curiosity.”
When the student struggled to connect complex literary theory to real-world applications, Regan made himself available beyond regular office hours and provided feedback tailored to the student’s individual writing style. In a separate encounter, Regan took time to understand the student’s professional background and goals, then adapted the lesson to reframe and connect classical literature in a way the student could appreciate.
“Dr. Regan’s approach made learning a dynamic and joyful pursuit, leaving a lasting impact on my academic journey,” the student wrote.
Outside of the classroom, Regan is currently engaged in a UMGC pilot program examining the integration of AI into the teaching space. Coincidentally, while a graduate student at University of Chicago, Regan helped test an early AI model for collaborative poetry composition, Gnoetry, which became foundational for current-day applications. He also participated in an earlier pilot program on labor-based writing, an approach that rewards diligence, effort, and risk-taking in writing improvement, and noted that he was drawn to UMGC because of the institution’s emphasis on drafting and frequent revision. Above all, he celebrates “the hard work and true pleasure that awaits those who would empower themselves with the written word.”
UMGC student
Both Hanawalt and Regan represent what the Drazek Award is designed to recognize: faculty who do not merely deliver content but transform the learning experience for the individual learners in front of them. They illustrate, in their different ways, that outstanding teaching is less about any single method than about a sustained commitment to showing up—attentive, prepared, and genuinely invested in what each student might become.
Read about more UMGC faculty members recognized by students for their impact.