Mary Jo Festle
Distinguished University Professor, 2023
During her three decades as an Elon faculty member, Mary Jo Festle has been a model for how to successfully integrate teaching, mentoring, scholarship and servant leadership. She arrived at Elon in 1993 and since then has served in leadership roles with multiple high-profile programs including as director of the Honors Program, associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and as coordinator of the Women’s, Gender & Sexualities Studies Program.
An Elon colleague notes that “as a member of the Elon community, Mary Jo has worked steadfastly to create the conditions for every person to flourish — acting on this fundamental insight about human nature even in costly, self-sacrificial ways.” Another colleague noted that they found her annual reports as a faculty member “a primer in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, as she detailed the implementation of new teaching approaches every semester.”
Festle was the recipient of the Elon College Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, the Senior Faculty Research Fellowship in 2009, the Daniels-Danieley Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011 and the Maude Sharpe Powell Professorship in 2014.
As a teacher-scholar, she has developed 19 different courses including innovative seminars such as “Race, Gender and Sports in the U.S.” and “History of Gender and Sexuality in the U.S.” Her 2020 book “Transforming History: A Guide to Effective, Inclusive, and Evidence-Based Teaching” has impacted teaching and learning throughout the academy and followed two other books — “Second Wind: Oral Histories of Lung Transplant Survivors” (2012) and “Playing Nice: Politics and Apologies in Women’s Sports” (1996).
Festle has played an integral role in Elon’s continued work toward greater inclusion, with one colleague noting her “strategic, visionary, caring and scholarly leadership” in those efforts. From 2013-16, she served as co-chair of the Presidential LGBTQIA Task Force and the subsequent implementation committees. Colleagues note that Festle has consistently brought her humility and humanity to her work, with a commitment to elevating others, particularly those who have been historically marginalized and overlooked.
Festle earned a bachelor’s degree from Knox College and her master’s degree and doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.