For the third consecutive year, James Madison College is celebrating one of its own for receiving the All-University Teacher-Scholar Award. Assistant Professor, Linda Sayed will be honored on May 1 alongside the 2023-24 award recipients for the annual All-University Awards Ceremony at 3:30 p.m. in the Kellogg Center.
“Dr. Sayed has played a pivotal role in making James Madison College’s curriculum and culture more inclusive. Her efforts have clearly benefitted all students, but they have been crucial to the success of students whose identities, experiences and aspirations have historically not received adequate attention,” said Associate Dean Linda Racioppi in her recommendation of Sayed.
Sayed, who has been teaching in the Comparative Cultures and Politics (CCP) major since 2019, is one of six MSU faculty members to receive a Teacher-Scholar award this year.
“I appreciate this award, but it reflects the type of students I have at James Madison College. The learning that occurs in the classroom is a product of student engagement and the tools crafted over the years with the guidance of my colleagues,” said Sayed.
Each year Sayed teaches MC 337: Global Public Health. Other courses she regularly teaches include the CCP sophomore sequence: MC 230: Cultures and Politics in Comparative Perspective and MC 231: Cultures and Politics in Transnational Perspective. Her senior seminar course is Health and Human Rights. Sayed also teaches MC 202: Belonging or Not: Muslims in the U.S.
“I try to challenge students and have them engage in difficult issues from systemic racism to Islamophobia to COVID policies,” Sayed said. “The purpose is to have students think more critically about these issues and the power dynamics involved.”
In addition to her Madison appointment, Sayed is a core faculty member of the Muslim Studies Program and affiliate faculty of the Center of Gender in Global Context, and the Global Studies Program. She is the faculty advisor to Arab Cultural Society and co-advisor to the JMC Womxn of Color.
Mohammad Khalil, director of the MSU Muslim Studies Program and professor of religious studies, wrote, “Professor Sayed’s service to MSP and the university community is exhaustive and especially impressive given her robust scholarship and her appointment in James Madison College where teaching undergraduate students is a top priority.”
Sayed’s research focuses on the Middle East and Arab diaspora with current projects centered on Middle Eastern/Arab American immigrants and the implications of pandemic policies on these communities in Metro Detroit.
“In my Global Public Health class, students reflect on how the needs of the Arab community are informed by familial and cultural expectations specific to their lived experiences, and in MC 231, students learn about the interview process and how to conduct their own interviews for research projects,” said Sayed.
Madison Alumnus Gabriel Sandoval (CCP ’23) was a student of Sayed’s in Global Public Health and Health and Human Rights. Sandoval, now a graduate student in the University of Arizona’s Department of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, wrote about the impact Sayed’s instruction has had on his learning and his decision to pursue graduate studies in political science and human rights in the Middle East.
“Dr. Sayed makes it a point to provide students with perspectives from around the world,” Sandoval wrote. “The readings she selects are a mix of classic theoretical texts and contemporary critiques, allowing for students to learn methods commonly used in the social sciences and apply them to the current events that directly affect their daily lives.”
For Sayed, teaching undergraduate students is mutually beneficial.
“I love seeing the individual growth of students from their first days in Case Hall to their concluding months in my senior seminar,” said Sayed.