Armando Montano
The Paw Print
Adams State College is currently preparing the final nominations for the fourth annual Presidential Teacher Award presentations.
This award is given to outstanding professors in acknowledgment of the dedication to their students. It also recognizes the extraordinary help these professors offer through their teaching, advising, and mentoring.
Last fall, Dr. Michael Mumper, senior vice president for Enrollment Management/Program Development, created a committee of four undergraduate students in various areas of academic study to help evaluate the student-based teacher nominations and narrow down the nominees to the finalists.
This committee consisted of Clayton Street, business; Kayla Lanoue, earth science; Rose Stroback, music; and Lindsey Nelson, psychology. The committee went about requesting the students of ASC to nominate their most inspiring professors to the committee for review with a 100-word essay, stating why the professor should receive the award.
More than 74 nominations were submitted by ASC students nominating 38 different faculty members this year.
Of all the proposed nominees submitted by ASC students, six finalists were chosen. These finalists are Armando Valdez, assistant professor of business; Renee Beeton, assistant professor of chemistry; Dr. Jared Beeton, assistant professor of earth sciences; Dr. Carol Guerrero-Murphy, professor of English; Dr. Richard Goddard, associate professor of history and archaeology; and Dr. Mari Centeno, associate professor of political science.
The committee in charge of determining the winners of the Presidential Teacher Award will take steps to fully evaluate the finalists to determine the winners.
They will be observing the finalists during their classes and subjecting the finalists to personal interviews to determine more about their teaching philosophy, classroom practices, non-classroom advising and mentoring activities, and teaching methods as well as how this has impacted their students. The winners of the Presidential Teacher Award will receive $1500 to support his or her professional development as well as have the opportunity to teach a special Presidential Teacher Course during the next academic year.
These courses are to help the students learn more from these presidental teachers and expose the general student body to a more diverse and in-depth content that allows these teachers to excel in their own areas of interest. Although these courses are most likely meant to include and introduce content into the ASC course catalog that was previously exempt, the courses that will be offered will allow the opportunity for a changing class structure to continue throughout the years to come.
It is these introductions from these presidental teachers that will allow the education that ASC offers to continually evolve and grow with the students’ future interests.
The finalists will be evaluated for the next couple of weeks until, according to Mumper, the three winners will be announced after spring break.
What’s Been Said…