Faculty Focus Archive

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Rebel With a Cause

Dr. Toni Sauncy has gone from loathing physics as a student to winning awards as a faculty member in ASU’s Physics Department.

During the 2009-10 academic year, Sauncy was president of the ASU Faculty Senate, faculty advisor for ASU’s award-winning Society of Physics Students (SPS), president of the Texas Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers and president of the SPS National Council. For her dedication to ASU and her students, she received the 2010 ASU President’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Leadership/Service.

Not bad for someone who used to ride a Harley Davidson and claims to be the only physicist her age (that she knows of) who has tattoos.

A non-traditional student, Sauncy did not start full-time college until she was already married with two kids. She was living in Big Spring and going to Texas Tech to get her mathematics degree when her commuting partner (a physics minor) talked her into minoring in physics so they could make easier travel schedules. Though her physics education did not start well, she draws on that early experience to help her own students.

“I truly loathed my first year of physics,” Sauncy said. “That is why, for me, it is critically important that my freshman students do not have the same experience. It gives me a good perspective because I remember very well what it was like to sit there and be completely confused about every word being said. So, I try really hard not to do that.”

“But, after I started taking some advanced physics courses, I loved it,” she added. “After my first course in optics, I was hooked.”

After earning her B.S. in mathematics, Sauncy was invited by one of her first physics mentors to join Texas Tech’s physics graduate program. It was then that she first became involved with the Society of Physics Students.

The SPS is a national organization that promotes student research and public physics outreach. Sauncy has been the faculty advisor for the ASU chapter since 2001, and has helped it gain recognition from the national SPS as one of the top chapters in the U.S.

“I think our chapter is very active in comparison to the entire nation,” Sauncy said. “I have the privilege of seeing chapter reports from all over the U.S., and we compare with any group anywhere in terms of what we do, our activities, our involvement with the campus and the community.”

Another key aspect of Sauncy’s service is the mentoring of undergraduate students’ research projects in her area of expertise and well beyond. In 2001, she received a National Science Foundation grant to purchase optical spectroscopy and electrical characterization equipment for her lab. Since then, she has mentored more than 40 student research projects that resulted in over 50 presentations at regional, national and international professional conferences.

“Nearly all of my research students go to graduate school,” Sauncy said. “I have a strong commitment to making sure that they are as well prepared as anybody else; that after working with me for a couple of years they can walk into a lab and do something intelligent. Even if it is not in their particular area of expertise, they will at least know how to handle themselves as scientists. That is a big deal for me.”

A 10-year ASU faculty member, Sauncy first came to Angelo State because its Physics Department already had a strong reputation. She has done her best to enhance that reputation on the local, regional and national levels.

“I love physics and I love learning new things and participating in new ideas and discoveries,” Sauncy said. “But, I also very much value the opportunity to build relationships with students and to know very clearly that I have had an impact on the lives of the students I interact with every day.”

“I can’t imagine doing anything else, and I can’t believe I get paid,” she added. “I would do this anyway. It’s not just a way to make a living for me. I just really love what I do.”

Sauncy and her husband, Bill, have two kids, Clay Sauncy and Shae Patyrak. Clay is in law school at Texas Wesleyan, and Shae is in medical school at UT-Southwestern. In her rare spare time, she plays the flute and periodically performs with the Concho Valley Flute Choir.

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Teaching for the Times

Sometimes, teaching is just in your blood.

Even before she came to ASU six years ago, Mona Dawson was teaching, just not in a traditional classroom setting.  First as a corporate nurse for a company in Victoria and then at Yoakum Community Hospital in south central Texas, she passed on her knowledge of caring for older adults as well as other important subjects to young nurses.

“My mother, who was one of 15 children, always had me around my grandparents and older adults,” Dawson said.  “So, the elderly, care giving, death and dying were a natural part of my growing up.  When I decided to become a nurse, the natural fit for me was to work towards becoming a geriatric nurse practitioner (GNP).”

Already with a background in teaching, it was an easier jump to her position as an assistant clinical professor in the ASU Nursing Department.  She joined the faculty after taking a pharmacology class at ASU toward her GNP certification.

“One of the instructors teaching the class asked me if I had ever thought about teaching,” Dawson said.  “I told them that I taught all the time, but I had never thought about actually ‘teaching.’  So, I applied, interviewed and got hired.”

Currently, Dawson instructs mainly first-year RN students in geriatric care and supervises their clinical rotations at the Baptist Memorials Center and its Sagecrest Alzheimer’s Care Center in San Angelo. 

“I love teaching first year students!” Dawson said.  “The Nursing Department has expanded my role and opportunities in being able to teach students about geriatrics, the older and frail elder population.  It will not matter what setting they choose or what field of nursing they enter, they are going to see my population of patients.  It is important to me that they have some understanding of how to help older adults.”

That dedication to her students and ASU has been noticed as Dawson was nominated for a 2010 ASU President’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Leadership/Service.

As a certified geriatric nurse practitioner with a background in geriatric care and research, Dawson was also a logical choice to be named director of the new Caregiver Research Institute at ASU’s recently-opened Center for Community Wellness, Engagement and Development.        

“I have been given an incredible opportunity to do something with my passion,” Dawson said.  “The situation we have today in regards to care giving is unprecedented.  So, providing nursing care to older adults, helping caregivers decrease stress and researching ways in which nurses can help the aging population will be the focus of the institute.”

Her position at the institute also gives Dawson the opportunity to be on the front lines for the rapidly approaching “silver tsunami” entrance of the baby boomer generation into geriatric care starting in 2011. 

“We’ve got resources, which will probably be dwindling over the next few years, and we have many providers who may have to change the way they practice,” Dawson said.  “But, for the most part, what we don’t have is the ‘connective tissue’ that can produce an individualized plan of care for these caregivers.  It is it truly amazing what is out there in the way of help that caregivers do not know about or know how to access.  Caregiver access and understanding will be two of the major issues that we will try to tackle at the institute.  We want caregivers to leave us saying ‘OK that works.  I get it, I understand, that makes me feel better.’”

And, the institute is not just for professional caregivers, it is primarily for family members and informal caregivers who are caring for elderly parents, spouses or other family members.

“The focus out of this office will be older adults and frail elders,” Dawson said.  “People didn’t used to live this long, and we don’t know how to deal with it.  There are a bazillion different scenarios and we are simply not prepared for this unprecedented tsunami that is coming.  So, hopefully some of that help will come out of this institute.”

In recognition of the influence Dawson has already had on local geriatric care, she was honored with the 2009 Community Partner Award from the Area Agency on Aging of the Concho Valley.  

Dawson’s husband, Michael, is a landman who works from their ranch in Sanderson.  They have three grown kids, Autry, 29, Katheryn, 27, and Adam, 26.

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Paying it Forward

Dr. Alaric Williams appreciates the support he received in his quest for a doctorate and on the road to a teaching career, so he is paying it forward.

The assistant professor in the ASU Department of Curriculum and Instruction had aspirations from an early age to earn a doctorate, something most people wouldn’t expect from a child in a small town like Stamps, Ark.

“When I was in the first or second grade,” Williams said, “I would write ‘Dr. Williams’ on my video games.  I thought while growing up, because my parents said I had to go as far as I could, that everyone had to do that.”

“My faith is the first thing my parents taught me, and then it was the need for education,” he said.  “I like working with the younger kids because I want them to see that maybe someone like them can be successful.”

Born and raised in Stamps, about 35 miles east of Texarkana, Williams went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, a master’s in counseling and a doctorate in higher education-supervision, curriculum and instruction at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Recently, he elevated his and ASU’s name in his field when he was named national chair of the Student Affairs Partnering With Academic Affairs knowledge community, a sub-group of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), after two years as a member and two years on the ASU faculty.

“We do a series of conference calls on best practices and things that we are doing at our respective institutions,” Williams said.  “I’m really excited about being elected to the office.  I think it’s a good way to get Angelo State’s name out there.  A lot of people don’t know where San Angelo is and have never heard of Angelo State, so I think it’s a good thing for the university.”

“One of the things we did this past semester here in the College of Education was implement graduate student orientation,” he added.  “You hear about orientation for undergraduate and transfer students, but not for graduate students.  A lot of the time, graduate students get lost in the shuffle and don’t understand the simplest things in regards to graduate school assignments and class expectations.”

Williams said he told his NASPA colleagues about the program and they are interested in what ASU is doing.

“They said ‘wow.  We want to hear more about this,’” he said, “and things I hear at the convention, I pass along here to my ASU colleagues.”

Outside of class, Williams gives his time to support young people though advisory roles.

“I want the students to know I’m a big supporter of theirs,” he said.  “I’m a faculty adviser for the Black Student Alliance, a new student organization.   I also serve as co-adviser for the Student Government Association.”

Williams is not just involved with youth on campus, but also in the community and at his church.

“I just became a Big Brother in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters,” he said.  “I’m also working with the House of Faith conducting research on their results when students come and are participating and how that affects them down the road.  Are they successful in school?  I’m looking at the results of what they do and how it affects students in their families and their communities.”

At church, Williams serves as deacon, director of youth education and trustee.

“I like knowing that I can make a difference, and not for self-glory, but knowing I can be someone else’s light. I can help someone get to where I am.  My purpose here is to serve others.  That’s what I do.”

Another area of interest for Williams is how African-American men deal with counseling.

“A lot of men, especially African-American men, don’t favor counseling and tend to shy away from it,” he said.  “It’s not just the feeling that they are not macho or that they’re unmanly.  It’s also a feeling of not being able to trust the person they are talking with.  In my dissertation, I looked at African-American males who were enrolled in predominately white institutions and others who were enrolled in predominately black institutions.”

He found it made little difference whether his subjects talked to black counselors or white counselors.  They shied away equally from counseling on campus.

“I discovered that their religion played a role in their deciding to speak to someone,” Williams said.  “They are more comfortable talking with their ministers.  I also found that they are even more comfortable talking to friends in a social setting, like a fraternity or the barber shop.  They would open up more.”

Williams is studying the effects on research participants’ attitudes toward other races after taking an online diversity course and incorporated it into his Social and Cultural Influences in Learning course.

“We cover things like standardized tests biases, racism and stereotypes that may or may not be present,” he said.  “I had one student who was a teacher in public school who said after taking the course that it really opened her eyes.

“Every teacher in the school system needs to take this course,” she said.

Williams said he was proud and excited that she had that attitude after taking it.

In his spare time, Dr. Williams loves spending time with his wife, Andrea, and their three boys, Michael, Alaric Jr. and Aaron.

“I like to spend time riding bikes, walking, going to the park and just having family movie night most of the time,” he said.  “My wife and kids were my biggest support group while completing my doctorate. I am more than thankful I had them in my corner.”

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Teaching Excellence

Ellen Moreland always wanted to be a teacher.

Now, she is recognized as one of the best in the nation.

In November of 2009, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education named her the Texas Professor of the Year.  As a senior instructor in the ASU Mathematics Department, Moreland is fulfilling her ambition in a way that is bringing multiple honors to her and the university.  

“I am very pleased to have won for Angelo State because I think it is a way of getting our name out there,” Moreland said.  “I think there are far too many people who don’t realize what a great university this really is.  I’m very happy and proud to have received it, but I think anybody in this department could have gotten it.  We have a great department.”

And, the Carnegie Award is just the latest honor for Moreland, whose resumé includes a 2001 ASU Teaching Excellence Award and the inaugural Texas Tech University System Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award for ASU in 2009.

The Long Island native, who grew up dreaming of being a teacher, took a rather circuitous route to achieve that dream.  After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Clarkson College of Technology, Moreland spent the first phase of her adult life traveling with her military husband, Patrick.  Along the way, she worked as an actuary and in a law office, then finally got a taste of teaching when Patrick was stationed in Germany, where she went to work for branches of the University of Maryland and Boston University at various U.S. military bases.

“It was for Army soldiers and they are up and going early,” Moreland said.  “So, I might have a 6 a.m. class on one base in one direction, then get in the car and drive to a lunchtime class in a second city, and then have a dinnertime class in a third city.  So, I would go about 200 miles a day, but I loved it, loved the travel and had fun working with the soldiers.”

After Patrick retired from the Army in 1982, he landed a job with Ethicon Inc.  So, the couple headed to San Angelo and started a family.  In 1988, Moreland decided to go back to school to get her Texas high school teaching certification and resume her quest to become a full-time teacher.  Her timing turned out to be perfect.  When she showed up at ASU to register for classes, she ended up being hired as an instructor instead.

“That was the year the Developmental Math class opened and (then-department head) Dr. Johnny Bailey needed somebody to teach it,” Moreland said.  “Once I got here, I loved it.  I love the kids and I love the school.”

Over the years, Moreland has added other courses to her repertoire and now teaches everything from Developmental Math to Business Math to the capstone course for seniors in the secondary teacher certification program. Since she started teaching the capstone course, every student who has completed the program has passed the teacher certification test on the first try.  While she credits that success for her growing list of teaching awards, she thinks it also has a lot to do with her relationship with her students.

“If you come by my office in the morning, they are all over the place,” she said.  “They are sitting on the floor and we have to move everything off my desk to make room.  That is the big thing to me.  I teach for the kids.  I’m just not one who can turn a kid away.  If they want to learn, I am going to help them.”

Basically, Moreland just loves being a teacher and particularly being a teacher at ASU.  Patrick is retired now and the couple’s daughter, Kimberly, is a senior exercise science major at ASU.  With now more than 20 years on the Angelo State faculty, there is no place she would rather be.

“I love the kids and I love being surrounded by them” Moreland said.  “I love ASU and I think it is a wonderful school.  I think the kids get a great education here compared to a lot of the big colleges and I think we have some of the best teachers anywhere on this campus.” 
           
“As a kid, I used to play school all the time and I always had to be the teacher,” she added.  “Now that I have become a teacher again, I would never dream of leaving it.”

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Social Researcher

The explosion of social media in recent years naturally drew the attention of Dr. Lana Marlow, an ASU assistant professor of communication and graduate adviser, who is turning her research focus to the trend in flux.

The social media issues she is exploring now differ greatly from her doctoral research at the University of Texas on how communication affects and changes the lives of women in prison.  She focused for many years on her dissertation subject, “Mothers in Prison, Women’s Autobiography, and Activism,” which resulted in a book on the subject published in 2009.

 “I’m turning the page and looking at some of the social media and interpersonal communications,” Marlow said, “and where we are going with that.  It’s not as depressing as the prison research, but it is important.”

Marlow said social networking affects everyday relationships that are maintained or end through social media sites cell-phone texting.

“I’m interested to see where that goes,” she said.  “Sometimes, people break up relationships by “defriending” each other on Facebook.  You don’t even have to do anything.  You don’t have to say ‘you’re not my friend.’  You just change your status or erase them from your page.”

Marlow said some people narrate their lives via social media like Facebook, Twitter or texting and she wonders what that leaves for them to talk about when they meet face to face.  Another social media area she is looking at is Internet access and how it affects student research.

“When I first started teaching, students would go to the library,” she said.  “It would take a long time for them to get their resources together and prepare their material.  Now, it doesn’t take them any time at all, so we have to set requirements for library resources.  They can use the library database, which is really just another mouse click, but we find they do a better job and have more reliable sources.”

The downside is that students don’t always process and retain material that is too easily obtained, she said, and the Internet also facilitates plagiarism, which has many pitfalls.

“People can tell when words aren’t yours,” Marlow said.  “You suddenly can’t pronounce them properly, and it’s embarrassing when you copy material that talks about the thesis research you did in your early 30s when you are really a 19-year-old student.  Situations like that are traumatic for them and for me.”

Marlow’s earlier research on women in prison was also traumatic for her as she found most of the women she studied were disempowered and didn’t have a say in their own lives.  Many came from abusive or drug-dependent relationships and found themselves in prison for crimes which wouldn’t land men in jail.

“Sometimes, we say boys will be boys,” Marlow said.  “If a woman is a mother and she breaks the law, she really gets the book thrown at her because the attitude is that since she is a mother, she should know better.”

What really drew Marlow’s interest, though, was that her own start in life was similar to many of the women she interviewed, who grew up with ill-equipped teenage parents or in neglectful situations.

“My parents luckily grew up, and I had many opportunities that may have been different had my young parents continued on their path together rather than separating so they could both grow up,” she said.  “I found that in a different set of circumstances without an opportunity for education or support, I or some of my family members may have ended up in that same situation. I also believe that the women I interviewed opened up because I was not just passing through or looking down on their experience and that I understood where they were coming from.”
Marlow studied personal autobiographies of mothers and their attempts to maintain dignity and closeness with their daughters.  Her study was attached to another study by Dr. Darlene Grant at the University of Texas on the relationship between mothers in prison and their daughters through a Girl Scouts program.

That study sought to find out if raising a mother’s self-esteem could, in turn, raise a daughter’s self-esteem, thereby cutting the vicious cycle of not standing up for themselves.  Marlow focused on the development of personal narratives in a silenced or coercive environment.
“It was illuminating and very depressing,” she said.  “They had regular Girl Scout meetings in Austin with the daughters of incarcerated moms and once a month, they would bring them to the women’s facility.  It is one of the few programs where their goal is saving the moms to save the girls.”

“They work on self-esteem issues, lifestyle issues, not necessarily for the moms but for the daughters, so they might do something different,” Marlow said.  “It was really moving and it will be a part of me forever.”

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Meritorious Service

Hot summer temperatures in West Texas are nothing compared to those in Iraq.

Capt. Brad Roehrig, assistant professor of aerospace studies/ROTC, knows that all too well after spending the six hottest months of 2009 at Joint Base Balad northwest of Baghdad, where temperatures reached into the 120s.

“That was the most heat I’ve ever felt in my life,” Roehrig said.  “When you walk out, it’s basically like stepping into an oven.  When you get back to your office, you hang up your uniform and it takes about 10 minutes for your uniform to cool down.  It’s hot!”

For what was his second tour in Iraq, Roehrig served as the J6 deputy director of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Basically, that means he had about 500-800 Special Forces troops depending on him and his team for all their communications in a variety of situations.

“Their main job was to advise the Iraqis,” Roehrig said.  “We had to make sure the Iraqi communications worked.  When our guys went out on missions with the Iraqis, we made sure all their radios worked, and there is a lot that goes into those radios to make them work.  There were also the Predator video feeds that we had to keep working.”

His group was also charged with maintenance of the classified and non-classified communication networks at the base, plus accompanying Special Forces units on convoys.  Though Roehrig was stationed at the largest base in the region and did not draw any combat missions this time around, safety for all the soldiers was still relative.

“We got shot at every once in awhile, but it’s pretty safe” Roehrig said.  “Mortars and rockets, we got hit with those every couple of days.  You always have it in the back of your mind that at any minute they could shoot at you.  So, you are always on your toes a little bit.”

Shortly after his return to ASU, Roehrig was awarded the Bronze Star medal for meritorious service in Iraq.  According to the brief accompanying his medal, “Capt. Roehrig distinguished himself by displaying initiative and serving with distinction as the J6 deputy director, providing critical communications support for three Special Operations Task Forces, eight Advanced Operating Bases and 46 Operational Detachments Alpha deployed across the Iraq Theater of Operations.”

A native of Sheboygan, Wis., Roehrig has been in the Air Force for 15 years.  In addition to his two tours in Iraq, he has also had assignments to Germany, Korea, Arizona, Wyoming and Virginia.  He came to ASU after serving two years as deputy commander of the 17th Communications Squadron at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo.

“I wanted to make a difference and do something positive with the cadets,” Roehrig said.  “A motto I go by is ‘would I like working for that person?’  If I see characteristics or traits that I don’t like in cadets, I try to fix them to make sure that the best product enters the Air Force.”

With two years left on his ASU assignment, Roehrig is also using the time to go to school as he works toward his Ph.D. in computer information systems/security through North Central College in Arizona.  For his next assignment, he is hoping for either the Pentagon or Special Forces Command.

Roehrig and his wife, Yuni, have been married for 12 years and have two children, Matthew, 10, and Gracie, 8.  The whole family is happy that Roehrig is safely back at home.

“It was hard for them when I was gone, but they did pretty good” Roehrig said.  “I was surprised how good they did, but Yuni kept them really busy.  She is finishing her degree, so doing homework and watching the kids at the pool was no fun.  Next summer is going to be much easier for her than last.”

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Clinical Expertise

With 27 years of experience in clinical practice, Harriet Lewis knows first-hand what students need to become professional physical therapists.

As the ASU Physical Therapy Department’s academic coordinator of clinical education, Lewis finds facilities where PT students get their hands-on training and prepares them for the experience.  She has secured more than 100 clinical contracts with health care facilities throughout the U.S., where ASU physical therapy students now have the option of doing their clinical rotations.  Several of the contracted facilities are on the U.S. News and World Report list of best hospitals, including Mayo Clinic, Texas Children’s Hospital and Methodist Hospital in Houston, and the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J.

“I make sure that the sites are appropriate for our students,” Lewis said, “and that the sites have all the information they need in order to mentor our students well.  I also make sure the students are ready to go, including having all their records in place and having passed all their classes.  I also prepare them for those aspects of work in the clinic that are not directly related to patient care.”

That type of support for students led the ASU Alumni Association to name Lewis the first-ever Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award winner from the new College of Nursing and Allied Health in the fall of 2009.

But, it is not all about just helping the students.  Lewis also prepares the professional therapists who oversee the students in their clinical rotations.  In that capacity, she was appointed to the American Physical Therapy Association’s (APTA) Clinical Instruction Education Board (CIEB) for a three-year term in July of 2009.

The CIEB oversees the APTA Clinical Instructor Education and Credentialing Program (CIECP) and the advanced version of the program.  Lewis is a credentialed clinical trainer for both programs, one of only two in Texas for the regular CIECP and the only one in the state for the advanced program.  There are only 49 credentialed trainers for the advanced program in the entire U.S.

On top of all that, Lewis is also an assistant clinical professor in the ASU Physical Therapy Department, where she teaches classes in documentation, clinical practice and practical skills. 

“I enjoy interacting with the students and finding ways to engage them in different topics,” Lewis said.  “But, in our new doctoral program, I will have fewer responsibilities in classroom teaching, though I will still teach my Introduction to Clinical Practice course and the documentation.” 

Prior to her 10 years on the ASU faculty, Lewis spent nearly three decades as a licensed physical therapist in a variety of settings, including acute care, outpatient orthopedic physical therapy, nursing home, long-term acute care and home health.  She received her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Baylor University and a certificate in physical therapy from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.  She received her Master of Science degree in exercise and sports science with a minor in industrial engineering from Texas Tech University.

Lewis’ husband, Preston, is director of the ASU Office of Communications and Marketing.  Their son Scott Lewis, daughter-in-law Celeste and granddaughter Hannah live in Anchorage.  Their daughter Melissa Kemp, son-in-law John and granddaughter Cora reside in Round Rock.

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Exercising Options

Although she didn’t plan on teaching adaptive physical education when she took a Kinesiology teaching position at ASU, Dr. Kathleen Price says her career has worked out for the best.

The 2009 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award winner from the College of Education finds that path rewarding after a career that began with a volleyball scholarship to Baylor University and continued at several public schools as a teacher and coach before she made her way to ASU. 

“After I graduated from Baylor, they offered me an opportunity to stay and do my master’s,” Price said.  “I finished my master’s in a year and worked with the volleyball team as a graduate assistant.”

She taught health and physical education in several different high schools before realizing that she needed a different direction in her life.

“In the back of my mind,” Price said, “I didn’t see myself doing that when I was 40.  I went back to school at Texas Woman’s University, which is noted for its adaptive physical education.  I was more interested in sports sciences – exercise science, biomechanics and exercise physiology.”

Price came to ASU’s Kinesiology Department while she was still working on her doctoral dissertation at TWU.  Here, she found another route stretching out before her.

“When I first got here, Melanie Croy was department head and told me I needed to teach adaptive physical education” she said.  “I had never taken a class in adaptive, but I hung around other graduate students who were doing that, so I had a pretty good idea about it.” 

“I was also familiar with adaptive because my grandfather had his leg amputated when I was seven years old due to circulatory problems.  I learned at an early age that life goes on and that a disability wasn’t something that had to stop you from living.  My grandfather continued to drive, fish, and live life to the fullest.” 

“It’s been neat for me,” Price said, “because I have been able to look at the exercise physiology and biomechanics side of why a person with cerebral palsy walks that way or looking at muscular dystrophy or mental retardation characteristics and what implication they have in terms of exercise or mechanics of walking.” 

Price also teaches physical education for elementary school.  She said students study age and developmentally appropriate activities along with classroom management techniques.

“I encourage my physical education students to make interdisciplinary connections, such as reinforcing math, science or language arts concepts while teaching physical education,” Price said.  “If we scratch the classroom teachers’ backs, they may do that for us.”

Outside the classroom, Price plays golf for recreation and walked a lot until she injured her Achilles tendons.
           
“I would walk in a neighborhood park, maybe 35 miles a week,” she said.  “In 2007, I had MRIs done and both tendons were torn.  It was a combination of walking on pavement and the amount I was doing.”

Price still walks some when she plays golf but not on a paved cart path.

Two sports she can’t participate in are curling and speed skating, which were popular in her native Wisconsin but not so much in West Texas.

“I’ve never had a chance to play curling,” said Price, who has one of the sport’s 44-pound oval-shaped and polished concrete stones in her office.  “It’s interested me in the last eight or nine years.  It’s getting more publicity and requires a lot of balance and teamwork.”

“There probably aren’t too many people in San Angelo with a curling stone,” Price said.  “When it was delivered, the poor guy from UPS pulled up with this box.  I thought it was going to be a great doorstop.”

She said she sees the stone as much more than that, however.

“The whole idea behind curling is a lot like life,” Price said.  “You look at the slippery destination toward a goal.  Sometimes there are obstacles you have to overcome and sometimes you need your buddies to help you through.”

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To ASU and Beyond

When Dr. Ed Olson came to ASU in 1978 to teach government, he found the university to his liking and also found a portal to the world.

The 2009 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award recipient from the College of Liberal and Fine Arts, Olson has served as head of the Government Department since 1989, and he also helped develop ASU’s International Studies program.

“I was an original member of the ‘gang of eight’ that went to Lüneburg, Germany, to negotiate the exchange program in 1992,” Olson said.  “From 1993 through the summer of 2008, I directed or co-directed with Dr. Sharynn Tomlin some 13 study abroad programs in Lüneburg, Sheffield, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland, and in 2009, Italy/Greece.”

Olson has used his government expertise to direct such courses as Politics and Policy in the United Kingdom, Britain and the European Union, and The History of Freedom.

“I believe that international education has become critical to anyone claiming today to have a higher education,” Olson said.  “In our global community, it is imperative that our citizens develop an understanding and empathy for other cultures.  Study while traveling is essential in developing this empathy.”

Besides International Studies, Olson has a passion for government and has spent 31 years instructing young minds on the intricacies of the American political process.  Although he didn’t plan to stay 30 years when he came to ASU from the University of California-Davis, where he earned his doctorate and began his teaching career, it has certainly worked out.

“When I first came, I had never heard of San Angelo,” Olson said.  “I debated coming here, but I liked the people, the teaching orientation of the school and the camaraderie within the department.  My colleagues became my friends.”

The Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award isn’t a surprise to many of his former students, including Kelby Hagar, president and chief executive officer of Digital Witness, LLC, and a Harvard Law School graduate.

“I took a lot of classes from Dr. Olson,” Hagar said.  “He was always helpful and a good adviser.”

Olson’s teaching specialties include the American political process with particular emphasis on the American presidency, campaigns and elections, along with American political culture.   He also focuses on comparative politics, international relations and methodology, Texas politics and British politics.  He has published articles in American voting behavior, political culture and campaign finance.

Additionally, Olson serves on the ASU Honors Council, which he chaired from 2002-04 after leading the Honors Program Development Committee in 2001.  He also serves on the College of Liberal and Fine Arts Curriculum Committee, the International Studies Committee and the Teacher Education Council.
 
Olson’s reach extends beyond the academic world as he has served as a political or legislative adviser for 30 political candidates and officeholders, including federal district judge and former San Angelo State Rep. Rob Junell and former State Rep. Dick Burnett.

In the community, Olson has moderated political debates and sponsors the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.  He is a member of the Journal of Borderland Studies editorial board and previously served as co-editor of the Texas Journal of Political Studies.

Such hands-on participation shows Olsen’s passion for the political process, whether he is teaching from a lectern in an ASU classroom or co-directing a program in England or Scotland for his students.

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Returning to Her Roots

Growing up in the rural Concho Valley, Dr. Bonnie Amos was introduced to nature at an early age and has been passing on her love of all things botanical to students in the ASU Biology Department for over 20 years.

Already the winner of ASU’s 2008 Teaching Excellence Award, Amos has also been named a Piper Distinguished Professor for 2009 by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation in recognition of her outstanding achievements in the teaching profession.

The Piper Foundation established the award in 1958 and Amos is just the ninth ASU professor to receive the honor.  In addition to being one of the top statewide honors for professors in higher education, the designation carries with it a $5,000 honorarium.

Though she originally planned a career in botany research, Amos decided to take the teaching route to have more contact with students.  Now, she has the best of both worlds.

“I really like the teaching portion of it and what is great about ASU is the opportunity that I have to work with students in research,” Amos said.  “In fact, the research that I do now, I could not do without their help.”

That research includes studies and surveys of plants native to the Chihuahuan Desert and Chisos Mountains regions of Big Bend National Park and is almost always aided by both graduate and undergraduate students.

“Being an ASU graduate, I appreciate what that opportunity meant to me when I was a student here,” Amos said.  “It really made a difference in my life.  It enriched not only my education, but helped me select a career.  So I wanted to come back and pay back that debt that I felt I owed this university.”

Upon her return, Amos was quickly named head of the Biology Department, a post she held for 13 years, but then vacated to free up more time for teaching and research.  She is also curator of the Angelo State Natural History Collections’ Herbarium, which contains over 60,000 plant specimens from Texas, the U.S. and around the world.

“It’s amazing,” Amos said.  “I think I could work in there even if it wasn’t part of my responsibilities.”

Amos credits an ASU plant taxonomy class for really opening her mind to a career in botany, but her love of nature goes all the way back to her childhood.

“My grandmother would walk me around their property, show me the wildflowers, tell me the names of them and tell me interesting things about them,” Amos said.  “My parents both loved the outdoors and my dad was an avid hunter and fisherman, so I was always outside with him.  I think that early introduction to nature made a big difference.”

Amos holds both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from ASU and her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.  In her spare time she enjoys reading, attending sporting events, traveling, snorkeling and spending time with her family.  Her immediate family consists of four rescued dogs, Sugar, Dottie, Lucy and Rosy, who share her home near Dove Creek.

While she admits to occasionally wondering what her life would have been like had she gone into research instead of teaching, Amos has found a home at ASU.

“I have excellent colleagues,” she said.  “We all have the same objective and that is doing the best we can for our students.  That makes it a nice place to work.”

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Finding Poetry in Life

ASU English professor Dr. Chris Ellery draws on what he sees and experiences for inspiration in writing his poetry.

“I think of the poem as a kind of interpretation of life, a lens through which you can focus life,” Ellery said.  “It’s a way of connecting both to myself and to whatever is not myself.  It’s a way of connecting to the deep currents of life, to the lives of others and to whatever life I’m living and hope to live.”

That philosophy serves the Texarkana native well in his writing and figures into his being named a member of the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL), a non-profit group that recognizes literary achievement and stimulates interest in Texas writers.

Ellery doesn’t adhere to strict guidelines in his writing, which makes for an eclectic body of work.

“I don’t like to put any kind of limit on what poetry is,” he said.  “I think there is some very fine fluid poetry, open-form poetry, what some people might call free verse.  There is no such thing as free verse. Whatever you do, you want to write well.”

As for formal poetry of others, Ellery is a fan.

“I’m reading the romantics again for a class I’m teaching,” he said.  “I love the blank verse of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey and the quatrains of Tennyson’s In Memorium, so I think you can write great poetry in a lot of different ways.”

The form Ellery chooses for a poem is a matter of feeling for the subject matter.

 “It’s kind of instinct to sense the form that would benefit it,” he said.  “Somehow, the poem dictates its form.”

“Whatever you want to call it, I don’t think anyone has ever explained creativity – where it comes from or how it works,” Ellery said.  “I’m just glad when it happens and there is kind of a joy to it.  Robert Frost uses a wonderful figure to describe this process: ‘Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.’”

Ellery sees creativity partly as a conscious choice of a particular word, sound or form, but at the same time, he believes that a lot of it is instinctive or intuitive.

“Letting the thing happen and develop where it wants to go – no surprise for the writer or the reader,” he said.  “You love those moments of surprise in the poem.”

Ellery is the third ASU professor to join the TIL, an exclusive group of literature advocates.   He follows fellow English professor Terrence Dalrymple and history professor Arnoldo DeLeón as members.

Among authors the TIL has honored are San Angelo Western novelist Elmer Kelton, Liz Carpenter, Gary Cartwright, former San Angeloan Mike Cox, Kinky Friedman, Skip Hollandsworth, Dan Jenkins, Larry L. King, Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry.

Ellery has been published in literary journals, including Cimarron Review, AVOCET and New Texas and authored two books of poetry, Quarry (Mountain Muse Press, 2005) and All This Light We Live In (Panther Creek Press, 2006).

He is also noted for translating other people’s works, including Whatever Happened to Antara, a collection of short stories by award-winning Syrian writer Walid Ikhlassi, published by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (University of Texas Press, 2004).

Ellery acquired his expertise about Syria while teaching American poetry at the University of Aleppo in Damascus, Syria, while on a Fulbright teaching grant.

“The Syrians have a deep respect for language,” Ellery said.  “Of course, it’s very challenging, but I enjoyed it a lot.  I was pretty provincial, so it was nice to get out of my comfort zone.”

Like in much of his work, Ellery found inspiration in his time in the Middle East and is working on a book of poems based on those experiences.  One of his poems, “Bimaristan Arghun,” won the 2005 Betsy Colquitt Award from the literary magazine, descant.

Looking back on his works, Ellery didn’t pinpoint one as his favorite.

“My favorite is always the poem I’m working on right now,” he said.  “I would be hard-pressed to select a favorite.  I kind of do it and get done with it.”

“To me, it’s more about the writing than it is about publishing it or sharing it or showing it to others.  I do have some poems that I like and that I think are pretty relevant.  They probably have something to offer to readers.”

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All That Jazz

Dr. Tim Bonenfant has encountered some interesting and famous people during his professional career.

On that path, he also found a natural career choice that led him to become an assistant professor of music at ASU. 

“I grew up with music around me,” Bonenfant said.  “I didn’t understand why everybody in the world didn’t play music, because that was just the way I grew up.”

His dad was a drummer for the U.S. Naval Academy Band and his brother also took up the drums.  Bonenfant, who teaches single reeds at ASU, settled on the clarinet.  He developed a good foundation through studies with a couple of Navy musicians, and later, with his high school bands in Virginia and Maryland and at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“I always knew that I was fairly good at playing,” he said.  “When I finally got to the point where there were people better than me, that’s when I had to really start working and not relying on whatever natural talent I may have had.”

At UNLV, Bonenfant worked his way into the university’s jazz ensemble.

“I played with a lot of different folks then, like Joe Williams, the former singer with the Count Basie Band, who lived in Las Vegas and performed with the band a lot,” Bonenfant said.  “I also played with Louie Bellson, who was a great drummer, and Don Menza, who played with a lot of bands, like Buddy Rich’s.”

“I also worked with a marching jazz band at Disneyland one summer while I was still attending UNLV,” Bonenfant said.  “They brought in folks like Bobby Shew and Gary Foster, some really heavyweight studio players, to work with the band a week at a time.”

Bonenfant moved to California in 1985 where he attended the California Institute of the Arts, working on a master’s degree and picking up some more musical experience.

Bonenfant moved back to Las Vegas as assistant to the conductor and as operations manager with the Las Vegas Symphony until it ceased operations due to financial difficulties.  He then began teaching at UNLV, first in jazz history and then rock history while playing with the Las Vegas Philharmonic.

Between playing with the Philharmonic and freelancing with orchestras put together for special events, Bonenfant performed with renowned Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti four times, Pavarotti’s countryman Andrea Bocelli, also a tenor, classical and pop singer Charlotte Church and Spanish tenor Placido Domingo.

At other times, Bonenfant expanded his musical horizons by playing with composer-pianist Marvin Hamlisch, Broadway star Tommy Tune, Peter Schickele (also known as PDQ Bach), the Village People and the Moody Blues.

He even played with one big name by chance.

“Dudley Moore (actor, noted pianist) was playing a fundraiser with the Las Vegas Symphony for the Nevada Ballet Theatre,” Bonenfant said.  “I ended up playing the big clarinet solo at the beginning of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ after my teacher, Felix Viscuglia, started to play and nothing came out of his horn.”

“A pad had fallen out, so he just turned to me and said, ‘here, play.’  So, on the spur of the moment, with no sleep the night before because I had been up all night copying music for another concert, I’m playing this solo,” Bonenfant said.  “Fortunately, it’s one of those solos that I really can play in my sleep.  Felix said, ‘OK, you did the rehearsal, so you should do the concert.’  So, I ended up playing with Dudley Moore.”

Bonenfant also crossed paths with some “names” from the music world after he arrived at ASU.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve played with contemporary Christian singer Sandi Patty and Monica Mancini (composer-conductor Henry Mancini’s daughter),” he said.

ASU came to Bonenfant’s attention as a possible employer while he was still writing his dissertation after his father sent him a list of eight places that had clarinet openings.

“I ended up getting the job I wanted and I’ve been here ever since,” Bonenfant said.  “Every year seems to have gotten better.  My colleagues are great.  It’s very rare when you run into a department where you get along with almost everybody.”

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Leader of the Herd

For more than 30 years, Dr. Gil Engdahl has been helping shape the Angelo State Agriculture Department and its students.

A native of West Texas, Engdahl grew up on a stock farm near Brady, where he still holds about 1,000 acres of farm and ranch land.  While his university education took him out of the area to Texas A&M, he came back as soon as he could, joining the ASU faculty in 1976 for his first job out of college.

“To me it was a nice challenge starting out,” Engdahl said.  “Back in the mid-70s, ASU was just getting cranked up as a four-year school.  We spent a lot of time getting the sheep and goat program going and that was a lot of fun.”

In light of his Aggie education, Engdahl took a big chance coming to Angelo State, passing up a job as a livestock specialist with the Texas A&M Extension Service to join ASU’s fledgling agriculture program.

“It was a lot more of a challenge to come to a new program and try to be a part of growing it into something that we could really be proud of,” Engdahl said.  “To me, it has been more fun to do that than to go to an established program.  We have as good a program as a lot of big schools.”

In addition to teaching classes, Engdahl has been head of the Agriculture Department since 1997.  During his tenure he also helped start the student Block and Bridle Club and was instrumental in the formation of the multi-award-winning student livestock judging and wool judging teams. 

His office is literally crammed with awards for his service to FFA (Future Farmers of America), 4-H clubs, the Block and Bridle Club and the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo.  He also received the 2008 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award for the College of Sciences from the ASU Alumni Association.

“When you have been with the school as long as I have, it is part of your life,” Engdahl said.  “To be honored for coming in and having fun for 30-plus years, maybe I should be giving someone else an award for allowing me to do that.”

One major factor that has kept Engdahl at ASU is the university’s Management, Instruction and Research (MIR) Center, more commonly known as the ASU Ranch.  Located off U.S. Highway 87 just north of San Angelo, the MIR Center includes 6,000 acres of farm and ranch land that is home to a multitude of wildlife, a herd of Angus cattle, Boer and Angora goats, and Rambouillet, Suffolk and “hair” sheep.  It also houses the Food Safety and Product Development Lab and ASU Meat Market.

“It is really a remarkable thing for a small school to have a facility like that,” Engdahl said.  “Most schools, even Division I schools, don’t have a ranch where students can go and get hands-on experience.  It really helps us build a solid program for our students.”

Getting to know students in ASU’s more intimate classroom and office settings is also something Engdahl has enjoyed over his many years at the university.

“Sometime I think you should have a degree in psychology for this job instead of animal science, though,” Engdahl said.  “I talk to students about boyfriend-girlfriend problems, school problems, financial problems and the list goes on.  You try to help them any way you can and I like that about ASU, because it is small enough to where we can still do a lot of interaction with the students.”

He also likes being close to his place in Brady, where he spends most of his spare time when he is not on a golf course somewhere.  But, regardless of how or why, Engdahl and ASU have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship that is now well into its fourth decade.

“I’ve had several land grant schools offer me jobs over the years,” Engdahl said.  “But, I just didn’t care to leave.  ASU is a good school and I’ve had a good run here.”

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Dr. Mary Ellen Hartje: Woman of Letters

The secret to success as a teacher is enthusiasm for the work, said Dr. Mary Ellen Hartje, an ASU English professor.

“It’s like inspiration,” she said. “It’s either there or not.”

Hartje said students feed off enthusiasm and absorb whatever the teacher is trying to impart to them.  She tries to instill in students an interest in English literature and writing skills, and hopefully, her passion for language arts.

“My desire to teach is just a part of who I am,” Hartje said.  “It’s a natural thing that I do that fulfills me.  If you are going to spend most of your days doing what you choose, it is so much better if it’s something that you truly love.”

Hartje loves literature and teaches it from the sophomore level up to graduate classes.

“At any level,” she said, “I try to get students to have an open mind and read literature analytically; I want them to engage in a discussion between themselves and what they are reading – to really get at what’s there.”

Her passion for teaching has earned her multiple teaching honors.

Hartje was the Distinguished Faculty Achievement recipient from the College of Liberal and Fine Arts for 2008.  She received the ASU Teaching Excellence Award in 2002 and was named to “Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers in 2004-05.

Hartje tries to impress upon students that literature is more than class work.

“Literature is a reflection of our lives, no matter when it was written,” she said.  “It reflects the human experience.  Students come to literature class thinking it is just stuff they have to read.  They do catch on that it is really about them and it becomes very relevant by the end of the semester.”

Hartje’s specialty is 19th century British literature with a focus on the romantic poets, such as Wordsworth, Keats and Coleridge.  She is also partial to Victorian poet Robert Browning and teaches Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” at the sophomore level.

“What inspires me is literature – poetry, novels and nonfiction,” Hartje said.  “It tells us about our lives, our history and the choices we make as human beings.  It tells us about relationships.  It’s the world recorded for us in story form or poetry.”

She looks forward to each new term.

“Every semester, I have a new set of classes and a new set of students,” Hartje said.  “I like teaching some of the same things over and over, but I also like to teach new things I haven’t taught before, so I challenge myself.”

Besides her favorite 19th century British literature, Hartje also can teach American literature, contemporary works, novels and poems.

“That’s very challenging to me since my area is British literature,” she said, “but it’s great fun.”

If it sounds like Hartje loves to teach, it’s because she does.

“I do love it,” she said.  “I’ve loved it since I was a little girl.  That’s what I’ve always wanted to do and that’s what I’ve always done.”

Hartje taught high school English at Miles and San Angelo Lake View high schools before coming to ASU to work on a master’s degree.  She taught at ASU for a couple of years and then went to Baylor for a Ph.D.

In addition to her teaching, Hartje serves on numerous departmental and university committees.  She is the Chair of the ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton, and she is the General Editor of Concho River Review, a literary journal.

When she isn’t teaching composition and literature, Hartje enjoys spending time outdoors, particularly puttering around in her yard.  She also loves sharing as much time as she can with her family – three grown daughters, three sons-in-law, and her 2-year-old grandson.

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Dr. Tom Bankston – Accounting, Economics and Finance

In his 35 years at ASU, Dr. Tom Bankston has gone from not necessarily wanting to be a professor to garnering awards for his teaching and dedication to students.

A San Angelo native, Bankston started his working life as an economist for Phillips Petroleum.  But, after earning his Ph.D. in 1974, he faced a career crossroad and decided to turn down the path that led to teaching.

“There were more jobs available teaching than there were industry jobs for a Ph.D. in business and economics with a major in finance,” Bankston said.  “I started looking for a job and there was an opening at Angelo State for a finance professor and I thought it would be fun to go home for a few years.  So, I’ve been here for the rest of my life.”

Currently a professor of finance and head of the Accounting, Economics and Finance Department, Bankston also served as interim dean of the College of Business in 2006-07.  In 2008 he was honored with the ASU Alumni Association’s Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award.

“Flabbergasted, stunned, amazed, I was all of those,” Bankston said.  “It is quite nice and very gratifying.”

But, perhaps even more gratifying to Bankston are the 10 student study abroad trips he has lead to Europe and Russia dating back to 1982.  His first trip was a bus tour that included Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, London and Paris.  Since then he has taken ASU students to Germany eight times and guided his first trip to Russia in 2008.

“I get to know students really well in a month-long, every-day setting,” Bankston said.  “And the real reward, although a bit cheesy sounding, is getting to see them blossom in such a short time.  It's like a movie of a flower opening that is shown in a time lapse mode.”

“Also, it may sound far-fetched, but I think it helps the world overall when little by little we get to see more of each other,” he added.  “You find out that you are not so different and knock down some stereotypes.”

Outside of his campus life, Bankston is president of the board of directors of the San Angelo Day Nursery and has been a board member for 14 years.

“The nursery provides day care at about half the proprietary rate to make it possible for working parents, or those going to high school or college, to have a safe, loving environment for their children,” Bankston said.  “It is fun and heart-warming to visit the nursery and realize that because of the efforts of the community, these less-advantaged children will enter public school kindergarten with a level of academic skills comparable to any children in town.  We are helping children get a fair shake in life and I'm proud to be a small part of it.”

Bankston is also a board member of the Concho Valley Rape Crisis Center and faculty adviser to the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity.  He earned his B.B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Texas and got his Ph.D. from the University of Florida.  He has two daughters, Brittany and Celia.

The change from business to academe, according to Bankston in reviewing his career, is like going to the fountain of youth every day.

“You spend your life with young people, which gives you a false sense of how young you are” he said.  “The faces never change, they are always about 20 years old.  So, you are always in this young world.”

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Dr. Susan Keith: Shaping Up ASU

Dr. Susan Keith sees physical activity and sports as a calling and makes them an integral part of her life while promoting their benefits to others.

An associate professor of kinesiology, Keith also said they are a driving force in her career path.  That is why she is part of a yearlong study that will hopefully lead to the establishment of a comprehensive ASU wellness program that will be available to employees, students and community members.

“Recently, we launched a health risk appraisal for all our full-time employees to complete,” Keith said. “We hope to bring about a level of awareness regarding individual health status among our employee population and then eventually do the same for our students.”

The ASUFit program already has sponsored wellness seminars, a campus survey and run/walk events as it strives to get the ASU community more involved in the wellness initiative. “Bill Cullins has done a fantastic job of spearheading these activities.”

Keith’s involvement in the project is reflected in her teaching career that includes being named the ASU Alumni Association’s 2008 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award winner for the College of Education.

“To be successful, you have to have a passion,” Keith said.  “Passion is what it’s all about.  Having a longstanding history of physical activity, this really was the only choice for me and it’s the best choice.”

Keith said leading a healthy lifestyle figured into her career choice.

“I just can’t think of a better job to help me stay in shape, to help me be a lifelong learner and to be around bright, fun individuals,” she said.

Keith sees herself as a facilitator in class where she tries to inspire interaction and apply critical thinking skills.  In her health promotion in the workplace class, students work in teams to develop a level III comprehensive worksite health promotion program. By completing this project, students understand the planning, implementation, and evaluation process that will help them in any health-related career they choose, she said.

“Health promotion is part of the exercise science curriculum which teaches how you would improve the social environment of the workplace and what you can do to help employees lead a healthier lifestyle,” she said.

Keith’s interest in a healthier lifestyle also can be traced to her heritage.

“My mother is almost full-blooded Choctaw,” Keith said.  “There are health issues and disparities among underrepresented groups.  Some groups have a predisposition for certain health issues, such as Type 2 diabetes.  In my family, my grandmother and two uncles died because of complications related to Type 2 diabetes. My mother and two of my aunts also have Type 2 diabetes.  However, it still comes down to diet and exercise.”

She said some problems developed for such groups as Native Americans when they changed from their past culture to the contemporary lifestyle.

“Culture has done a number on them as far as the high incidence of Type 2 diabetes,” Keith said.
Through research and opportunities at ASU, Keith said she is able to keep up with professional development and continue to learn about topics to which she hasn’t been exposed.

Keith, who calls Oklahoma home, earned a bachelor’s degree in office administration from Southwestern Oklahoma State University, a bachelor’s degree in physical education from the University of Central Oklahoma and a master’s in education from Baylor University.  Her doctorate in health studies came from Texas Woman’s University.

Keith’s college career was marked by participation in athletics, first at the University of Nebraska where she was a member of the Lady Cornhuskers basketball team.  After she transferred to Southwestern Oklahoma, she played on the women’s tennis team and served as the Army ROTC cadet sergeant major and then cadet commander.

While completing basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., Keith earned expert grenade thrower and sharpshooter status.  Physical injuries prevented her from fulfilling military career aspirations, so she turned to business and then to education.

Her first stop in the education profession was Edmond, Okla., where she was the assistant tennis coach at Edmond High School.  Then, while working on her master’s in education with an emphasis in exercise physiology at Baylor, Keith became a graduate assistant in the Physical Education Department.  

Before coming to ASU in 1997, Keith taught physical education at Kilgore College and was its first director of fitness programs.
Keith’s journey of education and fitness continues with each new semester.

“You always need to have that element of wanting to learn and gain new experiences,” she said.  “You have to be flexible and adjust to the changing times.  Our student population continues to change.  We have to be willing to identify and understand the changes in our student population so we can better meet their needs.”

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Global Perspective

Educated at diverse points around the globe, Dr. Sudhir Chawla has been providing marketing instruction with an international perspective to ASU students for more than 20 years.

A native of Bombay, India, Chawla earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from the University of Bombay and his Ph.D. from National University of Ireland before doing post-doctoral work in kinetics while employed at the University of Toronto. 

Though he had always been interested in a career in the business field, Chawla’s engineer father refused to pay for his college education unless he studied science.

“My dad is now 88 years old and he still believes that business is a field for rogues and rascals,” Chawla said.

After graduating from the University of Bombay, Chawla went to work for India’s Atomic Energy Commission in 1973.

“Later on when I left India, I realized that what I had been working on was the nuclear explosion,” Chawla said.  “But, I had no idea when I worked there.  It was all done in a modular fashion, so I didn’t know what my role was.  I was just given a project.  In reality, I was measuring one of the fallouts of a nuclear explosion.”

It was a Welch Fellowship to the University of Texas that finally opened the door for Chawla to pursue his interest in business.  While teaching at UT-Arlington, he got his M.B.A. and then started his first stint at ASU in 1983 while finishing his doctorate.  His time at ASU was interrupted, however, when he had to return to UTA for his residency requirement.  He then spent two years at the University of Evansville until another job opened at ASU in 1989.

Since his return, ASU students have been benefitting from his background in both science and business.

“I strongly believe that a student needs some hands-on experience,” Chawla said.  “A scientist gets his experience by doing lab work, but in the business schools, we usually just talk theories and students don’t get to interact with businesses.  So, I try to expose all my classes to the community.”

The primary way he does that is to have his classes generate various types of marketing surveys for local businesses.  To date, his classes have done nearly 400 such projects for all manner of entities, including churches, sports teams and companies in the retail, banking and manufacturing sectors.  They have also done studies for ASU, the City of San Angelo and Tom Green County.

“In today’s global business world, companies not only require their employees to do the task assigned, but also to be good citizens,” Chawla said.  “Most companies reward employees who will go beyond just their tasks.  So, this is the best opportunity for students to work, get exposed and gain some experience of the real world.”

In 1996, one of Chawla’s classes helped Nathan’s Jewelers formulate a successful marketing strategy.  The project also won the district, regional and national awards for best student consulting project from the Small Business Institute.  There were more than 9,000 entries in the national contest.

Chawla has also won some individual awards.  In 2000 he was named a Piper Distinguished Professor in management and he was nominated for a Carnegie Mellon Distinguished Professor Award in 2001.

Though raised mainly in San Angelo, Chawla’s kids also benefit from his global perspective.  Every summer the family takes trips to different countries, having already visited more than 60 countries on five continents.

Fittingly, his kids also personify Chawla’s diverse interests.  His daughter, Raj, is a biochemistry/biology major at ASU and his son, Shiv, is an economics major at UT.

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A Symphony of Numbers

With one foot in each of the diverse worlds of music and accounting, Dr. Norman Sunderman has been using his talents to benefit both ASU students and the San Angelo community for more than two decades.

A 22-year member of both the ASU Accounting, Economics and Finance Department and the San Angelo Symphony, Sunderman is as accomplished on the clarinet as he is behind the lectern.

In fact, this fall he received the 2008 Outstanding Accounting Educator Award for small colleges from the Texas Society of CPAs.  Earlier in the spring, Angelo State students voted him the recipient of the 2007-08 “Rammy” Award as outstanding professor in the ASU College of Business.

“It has certainly been a good year,” said Sunderman, an Ohio native who started his career as a band and music instructor before making the move to accounting.

“There were more opportunities in accounting than there were in teaching clarinet,” Sunderman said.  “Plus, I’ve always been a numbers person.  Even way back a long time ago when I was a music major, I had to take 12 hours of science and/or math.  I took trigonometry, Calculus I, Calculus II and Calculus III because I didn’t want to take any lab courses.”

So, after teaching music for two years in Ohio public schools, four years at Nebraska-Wesleyan University and 10 years at Texas A&M-Kingsville, Sunderman got his M.B.A. and M.P.A. and started teaching accounting at A&M-Kingsville.  In 1987, he joined the ASU faculty and has since become a highly respected accounting professor. 

Even though he changed his teaching field, the talented clarinetist never turned his back on music.  He played with the Lincoln Symphony in the Nebraska and the Corpus Christi Symphony while at A&M-Kingsville.  He then joined the San Angelo Symphony as soon as he arrived at ASU, though in recent years he has moved to part-time status.

“A two-and-a-half hour rehearsal on Friday and a four-and-a-half hour rehearsal on Saturday with a concert Saturday night was starting to be a strain,” Sunderman said.  “I didn’t want to give it up completely, but I wanted less time.  So, this will be my third year as substitute or auxiliary clarinet.”

As a musician, Sunderman has played in all types and sizes of venues in several different states.  But, it was perhaps the smallest place he ever played that remains his favorite, the Art Gallery at Nebraska-Wesleyan.

“It only seated about 100 or 110 people,” Sunderman said.  “We would be playing and there would be people sitting on the floor almost looking up your horn.  It was really fun to have that intimacy.  There was always a packed house and the audience really enjoyed it.  So, it was the venue that was exciting, not really the location.”

Location, however, is why Sunderman and his wife of 44-years, Carolyn, have formed such a bond with ASU and San Angelo.

“The town has a symphony, an art gallery, movie theaters, shopping and medical facilities,” Sunderman said.  “It’s big enough that you live pretty nicely here.  It doesn’t have just 20,000 or 30,000 people.  The living is pretty nice.”

The living has been nice enough to keep Sunderman around and to feed both of his passions, which are also embodied in his family.  Carolyn is a retired music teacher and son, Kurt, is an investment banker in Chicago.

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Carving Out a Niche

Dr. Judith Hakes discovered the avocation for which she is best known while trying to do her job.

The ASU Teacher Education professor took up woodcarving while struggling to manage an unruly bunch of fifth graders as an elementary teacher in Woodland Park, Colo.

“There was a batch of boys coming up and nobody had been able to handle them,” Hakes said.  “We were studying northwest coast Indians and their totem poles, and I asked the boys what kind of activities they would like to do.  They said they would like to carve totem poles.”

Hakes had to learn the craft on the fly to keep up with her charges, but woodcarving was a natural for Hakes, whose father was a cabinet maker in Michigan.  The self-taught woodcarver took the craft she learned in that Colorado classroom and has stuck with it for more than 30 years.

Her best-known piece is the university mace carried by distinguished faculty members during graduation ceremonies.  The mace was designed in 1995 by a committee of faculty, staff and students and constructed by Bobby Peiser, retired ASU campus security director. 

Hakes’ job was to carve a Rambouillet ram, the columns of the Porter Henderson Library and the Twin Buttes, a landmark west of San Angelo, on oval mesquite inlays in the orb of the mace.  When she received the mace from Peiser, he had already fashioned the orb and set in the three blank ovals.

“I had no room for error,” Hakes said.  “I carved right on the orb.  I didn’t have a vice to hold it, so I did the carving in my lap.  One of the insets was the ram and I was comfortable with that because I’ve carved a lot of rams.”

She said the Twin Buttes image was more challenging because of the limited space and it had a Concho Pearl to be inset to represent the moon.

“Nobody wanted to set the pearl into the wood, so I did it,” Hakes said.  “I make a lot of jewelry, so that part didn’t bother me, but the carving had to be exactly right.”

Hakes said she likes to work with walnut, cherry and maple, but she has carved exotic woods like ebony and rosewood.  She said ebony is a dense wood and difficult to carve, but even wood she likes can be difficult, like the wood in a violin she carved.

“My violin has a fiddle back with a curl in the hard maple,” Hakes said.  “It will humble you.  It is not easy.  Sometimes you get a burl or highly figured wood with grain that goes every which way.”

A significant portion of Hakes’ woodworking involved musical instruments.  A violin, one of four she has carved, has a ram’s head instead of a scroll design which typically sits on the end of a violin.  The pegs used to tune the strings are in the shape of leaves and bigger leaf shapes are etched into the body of the violin.

Besides her four violins, Hakes also plans to add a mesquite harp to her collection of works, which already has three harps.  In addition, she has built hammered dulcimers, which are made with strings stretched over a trapezoidal wood frame.  Small mallet hammers strike the strings to sound notes.

Hakes’ interest in musical instruments comes from her original plan to major in music at the University of Michigan.

“Piano was my first instrument,” Hakes said.  “I played the clarinet, the saxophone, a little violin, banjo, the hammered dulcimer and the accordion.”

Hakes has performed publicly at such events as the Toenail Trail Days at Christoval and graduate banquets at ASU.

“I play music for my own enjoyment and for anyone who will listen,” she said.

A shortage of money diverted Hakes from a career in music and put her on a path to teaching.  She transferred to a junior college, then to the University of Northern Colorado where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education.  She taught school and then completed her education with a doctorate from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Hakes taught in Farmington, N.M., and worked in Albuquerque with Native Americans.  When the grants that paid her salary ended, Hakes decided to return to teaching in 1985.

“The first announcement I received from the placement center in Boulder was from ASU,” Hakes said.  “This city and campus felt just like home.  It didn’t take me long to accept the position.  I was glad to get to a small university where the people still cared and were serious about what they were doing.  ASU has retained that after all these years.”

ASU also has afforded Hakes the opportunity to travel with its emphasis on international study and travel, she said.

“I wouldn’t be the person I am without that travel,” Hakes said.  “I hope we keep doing that and expand those programs.  Our students are going to benefit many times over – to have your way paid to go overseas and study is a fantastic opportunity.”

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Shirley Eoff: Past Perfect

Shirley Eoff never really liked history until an excellent college professor opened her mind to the infinite permutations of the field.  As a result, she found not only a career but also a passion. 

Today, as a professor of history at Angelo State University, Eoff is sharing her passion about the discipline with a new generation of students.  That passion comes through in her classroom, helping her to be named a finalist for ASU’s 2008 Teaching Excellence Award. 

“History is more than names, dates, great men and wars,” Eoff said.  “Rather, it is the collective story of how people lived and thought and the consequences of the choices they made.  That allowed me to find in history the one field that could encompass my eclectic interests in everything from politics to literature.”

She aims to involve her students in history and, although she is a specialist in British history, she identifies local history projects her students can undertake.  In the process, they are not only learning how to conduct original research but also serving the community. 

“Using local resources,” she said, “I can provide first-hand training in methodology that reinforces classroom work and lets students become apprentice historians rather than just study historical topics.”

For instance, she assigned one graduate class in contemporary American history to explore the San Angelo polio epidemic of 1949.  The graduate students conducted oral history interviews with doctors and survivors from the epidemic.  Three of the students went on to present, as she described it, “an exceptionally well-received panel” at the annual meeting of the West Texas Historical Association.

The class’s work, which she shared with University of Texas history professor David Oshinsky, was cited in the acknowledgements of Oshinsky’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Polio:  An American Story.

For her Honors Program classes in America history, she has teams of students research and write substantive papers on the historic buildings in downtown San Angelo.  Using materials in the West Texas Collection, ASU’s regional historical archive, the students examine the origins and uses of those buildings over the years. 

Far from an idle classroom exercise, this student research is shared with local historical preservation agencies for use in developing grant proposals, preservation plans and publicity materials for the city.  As a result of their work, visitors to downtown San Angelo now find colorful banners hanging from adjacent light poles to highlight several historic structures.

“Most of the students really take pride in the work they have done and it links them to the community in a unique and special way,” Eoff said.

In many ways, history is about connecting the links in a never-ending chain between the past and the present. 

“There is always something new to discover, some new question to ask, some new way of looking at things,” Eoff said.  “I have a short attention span, so I need that dynamism and I need the human dimension to really connect with materials.  The combination of continuity and change intrigues me, and I like that historians deal in shades of gray rather than black-and-white explanations.  How can anyone not be fascinated and moved by those pieces of the past that people left behind to help us understand their lives, their triumphs and their tragedies?”

Her fascination with history began at Howard Payne University, where she graduated summa cum laude.  Eoff went on to earn a master’s degree from Hardin-Simmons University and a Ph.D. in history from Texas Tech University, where she served four years as a history instructor.  She joined the ASU history faculty in 1981 and has worked her way up the academic ranks to full professor. 

Whether studying American or British history, her primary teaching interests are in modern social and diplomatic areas.  Even so, she does extensive work in San Angelo and West Texas history.  Her contributions to area history earned her election earlier this year as president of the West Texas Historical Association.

History lessons, in Eoff’s passionate view, extend far beyond the classroom.

“I truly believe that studying history is excellent preparation for virtually any field and for life itself.  Beyond the obvious value of helping us understand the complexities of the world we live in, it provides essential reference points to help us make sound judgments on contemporary events.”

“The essence of historical study is examining, analyzing and interpreting evidence and using that evidence to craft a logical and persuasive argument,” she said.  “I can’t think of any aspect of life or any career that couldn’t benefit from those critical skills.”

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Roger Zarnowski:
Math is Music to His Ears

Growing up in the small farming community of Halstead, Kan., Roger Zarnowski quickly learned that he was different from all of his five siblings.

First off, they were all girls.  Secondly, while they were his piano teacher mom’s prize pupils, the musical gene in his DNA was apparently dormant.  One of his sisters is a guitar/piano teacher and several of the others still play piano regularly, but Roger found his life’s harmony first in physics and then mathematics.

Now a professor of mathematics at ASU, Dr. Zarnowski can look back and better appreciate that early musical education.

“I tried doing that for a few years and didn’t do so well at it,” Zarnowski said.  “But, there are some interesting relationships between music and mathematics.  One of my sisters and I get into conversations sometimes about her music and my math and how they relate to each other.”

“There are a lot of interesting mathematical relationships among the notes used in different musical scales,” he added.  “From that it gets into digital music and how synthesizers work, things like that.”

An ASU faculty member since 1991, Zarnowski was a finalist for the 2008 Teaching Excellence Award.  He came to Angelo State from the University of Oklahoma because of ASU’s emphasis on teaching and student research.

“Getting to work on research projects with some of the really bright students we get here is a neat experience,” Zarnowski said.  “I’ve been able to explore some areas that were curiosities to me, get some students involved and look into some new things.  It helps keep the mind going.  There is no shortage of cool things to do.”

Currently, Zarnowski teaches mainly calculus and differential equations.  He is also studying the recently developed mathematics involved in image processing for digital cameras and hopes to offer an introductory class on this new topic and its role in today’s technology.  When he is not crunching numbers he gets as far away from walls, bookshelves and computers as he can for outdoor activities like running, biking and visiting state parks.

Zarnowski holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in mathematics from Wichita State University and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University.  He and his wife, Becky, have a son, Adam, who is a government major at ASU.

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Edward Surface: The Music Man

After several years of teaching college students, Dr. Edward Surface figured he was finally prepared for his next adventure, a summer of touring with the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus.

A member of the Angelo State University music faculty since 1976, Surface went on the road with the circus in the early 80’s, playing trombone and tuba in the “greatest show on Earth.” It was not just a musical experience, but also a lesson in diversity.

“There was an acrobat team from China, jugglers from Hungary and many others,” Surface said. “With the circus, you are around so many different cultures with people that speak nine or 10 different languages, plus you are virtually in a moving city. It was fascinating.”

After working with acrobats, clowns and lion tamers, Surface returned to ASU with a new appreciation for his students.

Currently the director of the ASU Brass Choir, Surface has also taken his act on the road throughout the U.S., Europe and Canada. His credits include live performances accompanying such artists as B.J. Thomas, Anacanni, Harry Connick, Sr., Anita Bryant and Janie Fricke. He recently completed a musical tour of Mexico with fellow ASU music professor Dr. John Irish.

But, wherever he travels, Surface loves to return home.

“San Angelo is a gold mine as far as the arts are concerned,” Surface said. “We have a symphony here that has developed over the years while the whole arts dimension in this community has radically changed. It has been fun to be a part of that through my association with the symphony and with ASU. That is what caused me to stay all these years, I kind of feel like a pioneer.”

Surface holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and his Ph.D. from Texas Tech. When not performing, he enjoys the outdoors, traveling and golf.

“Teaching here and living in this community is an honor,” Surface said. “I feel honored not only teaching, but performing with some of the people like John Irish, the high level of professionalism and musicianship. There have been times when I haven’t been around that caliber of musician to work with and it makes a big difference in your life.”

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Sharynn Tomlin: World Traveler

Growing up in San Angelo, Dr. Sharynn Tomlin dreamed of visiting exotic locales.  Now, as head of Angelo State University’s International Studies program, she has become a world traveler.

Director of the program since 2000, Tomlin often leaves home and hearth behind to accompany student academic trips and attend conferences in places like Scotland, Costa Rica, Ireland, Belgium, France, Mexico, Spain and Canada.  While it’s technically work, for her it’s just living the dream.

“I’ve always been fascinated by different cultures, where people came from and how they got here,” Tomlin said.  “It’s just a natural curiosity about the world around us.”

Born a California girl in Monterrey, Tomlin’s first taste of travel came as a five-year old when her family moved to San Angelo.  Now, her favorite destination is Paris, though she also recommends Vancouver, and she thinks everyone could benefit from study abroad.

“The real educational value is truly in how our students can see the world around them,” Tomlin said.  “It’s often a life-changing experience for both the students and the faculty that accompany them.”

A 20-year ASU faculty member, Tomlin also interacts with many foreign students in her international business and management classes.  She sees them enjoying many of the same experiences at ASU.

“The one thing I hear consistently from many of my international students is that they don’t want to go back home, they want to stay here,” Tomlin said.  “A lot of them, even the ones just here on exchange programs, do end up coming back and finishing up their degrees or coming back and completing their master’s work.”

Despite her globe-trotting tendencies, Tomlin has found a “second home” at Angelo State.  She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from ASU before taking her Ph.D. from North Texas State.  Her husband, Stuart, also attended ASU, where the pair lived in married student housing.  Their son, Les, their daughter, Rebecca, and daughter-in-law, Amanda, are ASU alumni. 

Tomlin’s hope now is that her four grandchildren will follow in her footsteps, both at ASU and around the world.

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Cody Scott: West Texas ‘Ranger’

His affinity for the livestock, plants and wildlife of West Texas has helped make ASU animal science professor Dr. Cody Scott one of the top range management professionals in the entire country.

He is the 2007 recipient of both the state and national Outstanding Young Range Professional Award from the Society for Range Management.

“You’re looking at brush control, increasing forage production, increasing biodiversity, increasing animal gains and even improving the habitat for wildlife,” Scott said. “The distinction of range management from wildlife management or ecology is that we are dealing with systems that have livestock involved in them.”

“That is not always the case now,” he added, “but the issues are still the same. We’re still trying to improve soil stability, increase vegetation production and improve the aesthetics of the land.”

A West Texas native, Scott has been on the ASU faculty since 1995. Outside the classroom, he conducts his own research, advises graduate research projects, consults with area landowners and directs the public draw hunts at the ASU Ranch. He is also responsible for all range management decisions at the ranch. But, what he likes best is indoors, inside the classroom.

“I really like research and I wanted to leave my mark as a research scientist,” Scott said. “Since I’ve been here, that has changed. When I first came here, if you asked me what I enjoyed most, it was the research part and then teaching. Now, no matter what else is going on, when I walk in the classroom everything is fine. The teaching part is what I enjoy more now.”

Fittingly, it was the accomplishments of a student, Corey Owens, which provided Scott with the highlight of his teaching career. Owens was recognized as the outstanding graduate student at ASU in 2007, only the second time the designation had ever been awarded. He has since joined Scott on the faculty of the ASU Agriculture Department.

“I advised him for most of his undergraduate career and then I was his master’s thesis adviser,” Scott said. “We got to be close friends during that time. Working with him and seeing him come along, seeing him advance, that was one of the coolest things.”

In his spare time, Scott enjoys golfing, hunting, fishing, raising horses and sheep, and watching his son, Brian, play sports for Veribest High School. Brian is following his dad to ASU in the fall and hopes to play football for the Rams. Scott’s mom, Susan Farr, and wife, Bridget, hold degrees from ASU, where Scott also received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“I think most people would like to go back to work for a university they went to school at,” Scott said. “It is great for me to get to do it. I enjoy it and I love my job. I really do.”

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David Tarver: Teacher and Birder

Spending his entire career in the mostly indoor world of higher education has given Dr. David Tarver a particular appreciation of the great outdoors, most noticeable in his hobby of bird watching.

After starting out as a public school biology teacher, Tarver’s migratory path took him into college administration and finally to Angelo State University, where he teaches in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.  But, his love of all things feathered often takes him into the field to photograph and help band the local avian populations.

“We band them for scientific purposes and the data goes to a national databank,” Tarver said.  “We track things like migration routes, age, sex and population densities of birds.  So, the scientist part of me is still in there.”

An avid bird watcher and photographer since 1970, Tarver also participates in the annual summer banding of hummingbirds at the Hummer House in Christoval.  His picture of a painted bunting was used for a San Angelo Chamber of Commerce ad in a recent issue of Texas Monthly magazine.

When he comes inside, Tarver aims to help his flock of students spread their wings and fly.

“To help them learn about managing their way through college and give them potential for success is just exciting,” Tarver said.  “All the students are great to work with, both at the bachelor’s and master’s degree levels.  They are so appreciative of somebody showing interest in them.”

His work with students has earned Tarver a 2005 “Rammy” award from the Student Government Association and a 2006 Distinguished Faculty Award from the Alumni Association.  He will also be keeping an eagle-eye on the Faculty Senate as president for 2007-08.

“It’s an opportunity to be the voice of the faculty to the administration,” Tarver said.  “So, if there are positive and/or challenging things that we need to dialogue with the administration about, it gives me a direct opportunity to be influential and I like that.”

Tarver earned his bachelor’s degree from Tarleton State, his master’s from UT-Permian Basin and his Ed.D. from the former East Texas State.  He and his wife, Debbie, have four “children.” They are two Yorkshire terriers, Harley and Hannah, and two Eastern box turtles, Digger and Denise.

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Terry Dalrymple: The Dawning Light

Whether in the great outdoors or in the classroom, Dr. Terence A. “Terry” Dalrymple enjoys nothing more than seeing the light dawn, either on a West Texas horizon or in the eyes of a student who catches the joy of literature and writing.

From childhood the Angelo State University English Professor learned an appreciation of the outdoors from his parents and grew up with fond memories of hiking and camping in the Texas Hill Country as he pondered the majesty of nature.

With his love of the outdoors, he found a kinship with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, both the book and the character inspiring him both as a lover of literature and as a writer.

“I recognized early on how much literature had to offer in regard to understanding human experience,” said Dalrymple, holder of the John S. Cargile University Professorship and the ASU Alumni Association’s 2007 Distinguished Faculty Award Recipient in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts.

Just as he found awe in nature, Dalrymple also found majesty in the well-crafted sentence or the well-drawn character who gives us insight into ourselves and into our lives. That love of literature and his active imagination have spawned two books of fiction and 16 short stories as well as dozens of articles and reviews.

His artistry with words has earned him membership in the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters, not to mention the praise of his students and fellow faculty members.

“I enjoy working with students who love, or develop a love for, what I love – reading, writing and discussing reading and writing,” Dalrymple said.

Dalrymple arrived at Angelo State in 1979 with a one-year appointment to teach composition in the English Department. He has been at ASU ever since.

“The emphasis on teaching at this university,” he said, “suits me perfectly.”

Dalrymple earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Southwest Texas State University and his doctorate from Oklahoma State University. He and his wife, Lorraine, have three children.

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Bill Doll: A Lion of the Stage

Dr. Bill Doll may not have an Oscar, Emmy or Tony, but the director of University Theater does have the 2007 Texas Educational Theatre Association (TETA) Educator of the Year Award in his trophy case.

Even though he lacks one of the top acting awards, he has performed on stage with the late Maureen Stapleton, who received one of each during her storied career.

“Maureen and I did ‘The Glass Menagerie’ when I was in graduate school and I met her the week after she won her Oscar,” Doll said.  “She played Amanda and I was Jim the gentleman caller.  It was a lot of fun to work with her for two-and-a-half or three weeks.”

Doll’s favorite role, however, was playing the Cowardly Lion in “The Wiz,” a rock-and-roll version of “The Wizard of Oz.”  One critic wrote that Doll portrayed “the most lovable and hilarious pussycat to ever tiptoe across a stage.”

With his swept-back hairstyle and full beard, Doll may resemble a cuddly lion as he reigns over the ASU drama program.  A member of the ASU faculty since 1999, Doll has directed more than 30 University Theatre productions.

“We hopefully delight and instruct,” Doll said.  “That is our goal from the classical model, that in this there is something entertaining that will delight us and there is also an important message that will instruct us.  Those are our goals in the theatre and many of the arts.”

In addition to his TETA award, Doll also has three ASU “Rammy” nominations as professor of the year in the liberal and fine arts and was a 2006 nominee for the Faculty Senate’s Teaching Excellence Award.  Fittingly, Doll said he knew from an early age that he wanted to be a teacher, despite his acting talents.

“The theatre is perfect for me because it’s something different all the time.  I’m researching some new thing for every production and there are new challenges for every show that we work on.  I also really get to have an impact on the students.”

Several of Doll’s ASU productions have won awards at the annual Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.  He holds a bachelor’s degree from Fort Hays State, a master’s degree from Texas Woman’s University and a Ph.D. from Texas Tech.  He is engaged to Carala Luker of San Antonio.

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Terry Maxwell: The Blackboard Jungle

As a member of Angelo State’s biology faculty, Dr. Terry C. Maxwell has been known to capture all sorts of animals without ever touching a single one of them.

Maxwell uses his artistry to capture them in pen-and-ink on paper or in chalk on the blackboards of three classrooms in the Cavness Science Building where the ASU Biology Department and the ASU Natural History Collections are housed.

“I never had any really formal instruction in illustrating art, which is basically what I do,” Maxwell said. “It’s a lifetime of practice.”

Practice makes perfect in Maxwell’s case because his eye-catching blackboard art in Cavness Rooms 111, 119 and 123 has become an ASU student attraction and likely holds a longevity record for blackboard work.

His chalk portraits of a fish, two salamanders, two birds, three frogs and four large cats are all 15-20 years old. Not only do biology students see his illustrations but also the readers of the San Angelo Standard-Times, which run his weekly nature column “Naturally Texas.”

His art avocation, though, blended nicely with his formal education as he holds a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management and a Ph.D. in wildlife and fisheries science, both from Texas A&M, as well as an M.S. in biology from Angelo State. He has used his artistic talents to illustrate his love of nature, especially birds.

Today the former Biology Department head is curator of birds for the Angelo State Natural History Collection, a prime resource for field biology. He is also one of the most popular professors on campus, twice named by the Student Senate as the outstanding faculty member in the sciences. He has also been honored by the Faculty Senate and the Alumni Association for teaching excellence.

In 2007 he was named a Piper Distinguished Professorship by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the teaching profession. This statewide award is the highest classroom recognition for university professors in Texas.

Despite all the contemporary recognition, Maxwell considers himself old-fashioned.

“I am one of the few people apparently remaining who passionately defends holding on to the old-timey black blackboards,” he said. “Everybody’s gone to the fancy whiteboards with the erasable marker or the green boards with the yellow chalk.

“I practically chain myself to a blackboard when they are threatening to take it down and replace it because I can’t do my art on anything but a blackboard,” he said. “I’m sure the day that I retire somebody in charge of boards will say thank goodness he’s gone and we can put something modern up there.”

Maxwell and his wife, Ann, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from ASU, share many field study experiences and a love of art.

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Carolyn Mason: A Unique Perspective

Dr. Carolyn Mason brings her own experience as both a therapist and a patient to the students in her graduate physical therapy classes.

Having dealt with rheumatoid arthritis since she was 15 years old, Mason truly knows both sides of the therapist-patient relationship. By coupling that knowledge with her expertise in neuroscience, Mason gives her students a unique perspective on treating patients.

"There is the science, the foundation, so we know why we do lots of stuff in physical therapy," Mason said. "Then, there is also the art, which is the interaction of the physical therapist with the patient. I really enjoy seeing the students when they have those "a-ha" moments, particularly in neuroscience, when they can see the whole picture."

A member of the ASU faculty since 2003, Mason was a finalist for the 2007 Teaching Excellence Award. She particularly enjoys the faculty camaraderie and support at ASU that is not always found at all institutions. She is also popular amongst the students, earning outstanding course evaluation scores.

"I was looking for a relatively new program that would allow me to bring my theories and the way I wanted to teach into the classroom," Mason said. "That lets me not be bound by tradition and be able to respond to the needs of the students, the curriculum and the program and have that flexibility to use my potential in the best ways."

With her eye on the future, Mason is pursuing certification in aquatic therapy to stay abreast of that quickly growing area of her field and with the ultimate goal of adding it to the ASU program.

In her spare time Mason enjoys cooking and gardening. She has been known to try out new recipes on unsuspecting dinner guests and is currently landscaping her new home.

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Gloria Duarte: Lessons in English and Life

Despite starting grade school without knowing a word of English, ironically, Dr. Gloria Duarte is now the longest tenured professor in the ASU English Department.

As a result of her life experiences, Duarte delivers to her students much more than just lessons on composition and literature, but also tips on culture and life. In her lectures, Duarte likes to connect what she is teaching and what it means in the Hispanic culture. She also encourages students to learn a second language.

"It’s things like that that I enjoy talking about in class besides just ’here is what we are studying today," Duarte said. "So, whenever I can, I talk about the Hispanic culture and things that I went through when I was in school to make them aware that I have been where they have been."

A 30-year ASU faculty member, Duarte was a finalist for the 2007 Excellence in Teaching Award. Over the years she has seen thousands of students come through her classrooms.

"I enjoy the students, having different students every semester so that every 16 weeks there is a new group that comes in," Duarte said. "Sometimes what is funny is that the ones you think like you the least are the ones who keep appearing in your classes. It’s very rewarding when you have students who say you somehow influenced them. Sometimes you find out that the quiet ones sitting in the back are the ones you reach."

However, it’s amazing that Duarte even became an English teacher since she began elementary school in Menard not knowing the language. Not allowed to speak Spanish, she calls her early school days "the long silence" until she learned English by observing and mimicking the other students.

Perhaps because of that, Duarte says her proudest achievement is getting a Mexican-American literature class added to her department in 1998.

Duarte holds a bachelor’s degree from Southwest Texas State University, master’s degree from ASU and Ph.D. from Texas Tech. In her spare time she likes to paint and spend time with daughter Alexis and granddaughter Serena.

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Trey Smith: A Study in Balance

Dr. Trey Smith certainly displays a flair for balance, whether he is teaching mathematics, writing plays or riding his unicycle.

An assistant professor in the ASU Mathematics Department, Smith balances the classes he teaches between several different types of students. Besides algebra and calculus classes stocked mostly with math majors, he also teaches courses designed specifically for liberal arts and business majors.

"One of the best things about ASU is that it affords me an opportunity to work with some really great students," Smith said. "Due to a great research scholarship program and an encouraging philosophy with regard to student research, I have been able to work on some really fun projects with a lot of different students."

For his outstanding work in the classroom, Smith is the recipient of the ASU 2007 Excellence in Teaching Award.

Smith has also found a unique way to balance the two sides of his brain. While his analytical left brain concentrates on math lessons, he exercises his creative/intuitive right brain by writing plays. His works have twice been featured in the ASU Summer Dinner Theatre productions of "Uncommon Threads" in 2005 and "Original One-Act Plays" in 2007.

"His plays make me think and laugh and wonder," said ASU theatre director Dr. Bill Doll. "They also make me really, really puzzled about how screwed up those wires in his head must be."

But, the most obvious exhibition of Smith’s balance is when he is partaking in his unusual hobby of riding a unicycle.

"I took up unicycling two summers ago and it started out as a father-son thing with my then 11-year old son, Lee," Smith said. "After we both learned, we got seriously hooked. Both of us are actually more into muni (mountain unicycling) and have gone on several trail rides together."

A member of the ASU faculty since 1994, Smith earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at ASU and his Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. He is married to Laura Smith and they have three sons, Huston, Carl and Lee.

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