Associate Professor of Sociology & Environmental Studies at Penn State Altoona

Nicholas J. Rowland is Faculty Scholar for Penn State’s Engaged Scholarship Academy and Faculty Fellow for the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. In 2016, he was awarded the Atherton Award for teaching Excellence primarily based on his efforts in the engaged scholarship space. In 2007, Rowland earned his doctorate in sociology from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and joined the faculty of Penn State Altoona in fall of the same year. On top of teaching nine or more contact hours per semester, he conducts research year-round, and routinely offers independent study credit to students serving as research or teaching assistants, or those interested in conducting their own research projects. Rowland says actively engaging his students with nontrivial opportunities for personal and professional growth is his core teaching philosophy. Engaging, he says, means students have opportunities to engage with faculty, staff and their peers. Nontrivial, he says, refers to opportunities to publish, present or perfect a skill. To offer nontrivial experience for his sociology students, Rowland opened the social sciences laboratory for undergraduate students, an achievement he calls his “single proudest accomplishment as a faculty member.” Growth and success, he says, reminds him of an experience he had with a former student who was ready to drop out after four hard, low-GPA semesters. Rowland intervened, invited the student to the research lab, and began demanding better work from him. The student was able to turn his academic career and continued to grow, even after submitting a subpar senior thesis to Rowland. “When I suggested a full rewrite, he paused, crushed, and then bravely responded, ‘this is an opportunity for growth,’” said Rowland, adding that the student is now in graduate school.