Honoring GSC Faculty and Staff Making Strides in Their Fields

GSC Faculty Address and Present Across the Country and Around the World

Brad Strickland, Professor of English, presented two workshops, "Do you want to be a writer? Or do you want to write?" and "History, Mystery, and Research" at WIK, the 2010 fall conference of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in Birmingham, Alabama.

Dan Cabaniss, Associate Professor of English and Journalism, and Matthew Horton Assistant Professor of English, presented "Teaching the Moving Image: Establishing Literacy Standards for Film and Video" at the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy in Savannah.

Education Department faculty Carly Womack-Wynne, Barbara Carpenter, Regina Meeler, and Sheri Hardee, presented a paper at the Annual Fall Conference of GATE (Georgia Association of Teacher Educators) on the topic of "Acing the GACE." They also presented a paper at the conference on the topic, "Practicing What We Preach: Teacher Education Faculty Models and Brings to Life Their Conceptual Framework." In another session at the conference, Hardee and Meeler presented a paper on the topic of "The Challenges of Changing Pre-Service Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Socio-Cultural Diversity."

Ben Wynne, Associate Professor of History gave the keynote address, titled “Crisis of Spirit: A Mississippi Unit’s First Struggle with War,” at the opening of This Fiery Trial: An Exhibit on Mississippi and the American Civil War, a new museum exhibit at the Special Collections Department of the University of Mississippi’s J.D. Williams Library.

Maryellen Cosgrove, Dean, School of Business, Education, Health and Wellness presented a project titled “Opportunities to Teach and Assess Pre-Service Candidates about the Georgia Professional Standards Code of Ethics” at the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Teacher Education in Atlanta.

Mary Carney, Honors Program Director and Interim CTLL Director, Kristen Kelly, Assistant Professor of English and Leslie Worthington, Assistant Professor of English presented a panel entitled “Disorder and Civilization in American Fictions of Violence” at the American Literature Association’s Symposium on American Fiction in Savannah, Georgia.

Dana Nichols, Associate Professor of English and Spanish as been accepted (and approved by the U.S. Department of Treasury) to present her paper entitled "Semantic-Syntax in Song" at the 12th International Symposium on Social Communication in Santiago de Cuba in January 2011.

Gina Reed, Professor of Mathematics, presented at the Joint Mathematics (MAA/AMS) Annual Meeting in New Orleans on the topic, "Statistics For Millennial Learners."

2010 Literati Network Awards for Excellence

Steve Smith, Economics Faculty member, has been chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2010. Every year Emerald Publishing invites each journal’s Editorial Team to nominate what they believe has been that title’s Outstanding Paper and up to three Highly Commended Papers from the previous 12 months. His paper entitled "The Greening of the Multifamily Residential Sector" was published in the Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology with co-author Andrew Carswell from the University of Georgia.

2010 Eleanor Crawford Awards 

The Eleanor Crawford Award, sponsored by the GSC Alumni Association, was established in 1990 to recognize a staff member who has exhibited extraordinary loyalty, dedication, and service to the College and its employees and students. This annual award is named for the College’s first staff member, Eleanor Crawford and was most recently given at GSC's Welcome Back Breakfast for all faculty and staff on Monday, August 9, 2010.

Sheree Gravenhorst (third from left, with Alumni President Vicki Davis, friend Linda Wagner, husband Keith Gravenhorst, friend Paula Jones and former Alumni Affairs Director Michelle Brown), Administrative Assistant to the School of Humanities and Fine Arts was chosen as the Gainesville campus honoree for the Eleanor Crawford Award.  Now in her tenth year at GSC, Gravenhorst is described as “cheerful and friendly as well as professional.”  Her nominators wrote of her “extraordinary skills and abilities, intuitive and enthusiastic working style, and desire to go the extra mile with students, faculty and other staff members.”

John Williams (on left with daughter Erin Williams), e-Learning and Media Support Specialist, was chosen as the Oconee campus honoree for the Eleanor Crawford Award. A member of the GSC staff for three years, Williams was described by his nominators as someone who “is always willing to help, infinitely patient and responsive to eLearning issues, epitomizes the spirit of support and goes the extra mile, and exemplifies the dedication to GSC that is represented by this staff award.” 

2010 Best Practices Awards

Two faculty members, one each from the Gainesville and Oconee Campuses, were also recognized for “Best Practices” at the campus-wide event August 9.  Honored were Sue Doyle-Portillo, Professor of Psychology from the Gainesville Campus and Ed Glauser, our Alcohol and other Drugs/Wellness Counselor from the Oconee Campus.

Doyle-Portillo was recognized for her efforts to increase GSC student participation in research.  She requires her PSYC 1101 and PSYC 2150 students to engage in a semester-long program in which they work as a team to develop an original hypothesis, design and run a study to test it, analyze their results, present a 30-minute lecture on their findings to the class, and address criticisms of their work from the class.   Her project was regionally recognized when it was included in the Engaging Minds: Best Practices in the Teaching of Psychology conference at Kennesaw State University. 

Glauser (not available for photo) was recognized for the fact that he has been instrumental in developing and presenting a sophisticated, effective Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD)/ Wellness program that has served not only GSC students but also local high school students and other members of the community.  His program is innovative for the college in that it broadened the AOD program into a series of lecture and presentations for the entire semester drew speakers from local social services and law enforcement agencies and also engaged several national guest speakers.