FSU Faculty Members Receive Awards

Five Fairmont State University faculty members were honored at the recent 29th annual Academic Awards Celebration.

Dr. D. Stephen Haynes, Professor of Physics, has been named this year’s recipient of the William A. Boram Award for Teaching Excellence. Tanya Rogers, Assistant Professor for the School of Nursing and Allied Health Administration, and Dr. Elizabeth Savage, Associate Professor of English, have been named the winners of the Harold & Roselyn Williamson Straight Award for 2005-2006. Dr. Angela Schwer, Associate Professor of English, received the Excellence in Academic Advising Award. Jeff Greenham, an adjunct faculty member for the School of Fine Arts, was presented with the Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award.

The faculty awards are supported by gifts to the Fairmont State Foundation, Inc. To make a gift online, click here.

William A. Boram Award for Teaching Excellence

The Faculty Development Committee selected Dr. D Stephen Haynes as the winner of the 22nd annual Boram Award in recognition of his outstanding achievement as demonstrated by his sustained, energetic and successful commitment to teaching. The award honors a faculty member who has demonstrated unusual dedication and accomplishments in teaching.

Haynes joined the Fairmont State faculty in 1970. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in Physics from Florida State University. He has taught General Physics, Atomic and Nuclear Physics, Electronics, Special Problems in Physics, Demonstrations in Physics, Advanced Mechanics, Physical Science and College Algebra. He has extended his service to students beyond the classroom, having served as an advisor to Pre-Dental students and to Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. He also taught Physics with Fairmont State’s Project AMPLE for many years.

Haynes’ research activities have included the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Fellowship to conduct research on the clean burning of coal at the Morgantown Energy and Technology Center. He has several publications in the field of nuclear physics research.

His service to the university has included membership on several Faculty Senate standing committees including – Admissions and Credits (Chair), Faculty Development, Athletic, Faculty Personnel, Academic Appeals Board, and the Committee on Committees. He also represented his school on Faculty Senate. His service on ad-hoc and special committees has included Academic Vice President Search, Division Chair Search, Legislative Advocacy (Co-chair), and Promotion and Tenure Guidelines.

Haynes has also been active in the local community. He has been a member of the Board of Directors for the Prickett’s Fort Memorial Foundation since 1988. He had a leading role in “Prickett’s Fort: An American Frontier Musical” for 15 years. He has also made presentations on frontier history on “Saturday AM Live,” and to 4-H clubs, scout troops and public and home school classes.

Harold & Roselyn Williamson Straight Award

The Harold & Roselyn Williamson Straight Award is intended to honor or to encourage outstanding, innovative or otherwise distinctive teaching or scholarship at Fairmont State by faculty in either two-year or four-year programs. Nominations and applications are invited and received by the Faculty Development Committee, with final selection of the recipient for an annual cash award to be determined by faculty representatives to the committee. Award recipients receive appropriate campus and public recognition for this achievement, with the expectation that his or her contributions to academic excellence will continue.

Tanya Rogers received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Fairmont State and a Master of Science in Nursing degree from West Virginia University.

Rogers has been teaching nursing at FSU full-time for four years. During that time, she has taught several courses and has volunteered to develop the new remediation courses. A member of the Adult Health Nursing teaching team, she serves as a classroom and clinical instructor. She uses many innovative teaching strategies and encourages other faculty members to incorporate these methods into their instructional designs. Examples of her strategies and methods include cooperative learning groups, concept mapping, critical thinking games, online discussion groups and journaling.

Her involvement within the campus community includes chairing the School of Nursing Recruitment Committee, serving as the School of Nursing’s representative to the Curriculum Committee and chairing the Student Hearing Board. Rogers has been accepted to the Higher Educational Leadership doctoral program at WVU.

Dr. Elizabeth Savage received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from James Madison University; a Master of Arts degree in English from Boston College and a Ph.D. in English from Duquesne University. She has been an Associate Professor of English at Fairmont State since 2004 after serving as an Assistant Professor here for three years. Courses she has regularly taught are American Novel, Contemporary Poetry, Major American Writers (1870-1940), Minority Literature, Literary Criticism, World Literature and Research Writing. Included among her awards and honors are the following: 2005 nominee for the Williamson-Straight Award, “Nineteenth-Century American Woman Writers and the Literary Marketplace” Faculty Curriculum Development Award and the Individual Artist’s Fellowship, Virginia Commission for the Arts.

She is currently a member of the Composition Committee, the Sophomore Literature Committee and the Legislative Advocacy Committee at Fairmont State and is a past member of the Faculty Welfare Committee and the Shared Governance Committee. Her service to Fairmont State also includes being advisor to BIGLs & Friends, Co-director of the Women’s Studies Committee, Faculty Senator and Associate Editor of Kestrel. Her recent professional activities include serving as guest editor for a special issue of “Sagetrieb: Poetry and Poetics After Modernism,” focusing on women poets of the 1950s; member of the Arts Therapy Curriculum Committee, Director of the Women’s Studies Capstone Course, development of the lecture series for Women’s Studies Fall Colloquium and designer and teacher of a poetry program for ArtSmarts.

Excellence in Academic Advising Award

The award is presented to honor demonstrated excellence and commitment to the significant force that academic advisors play in the education, personal development and success of their advisees. It is offered as a tribute but also as encouragement to all faculty advisors to persist in their efforts to help students achieve.

Dr. Angela Schwer advises students in the Department of Language & Literature and serves as the advisor to PROMISE Scholarship students across all disciplines. She actively seeks out students to schedule conferences with them and encourages students to be active participants and to take charge of their academic decisions. She meets with students each semester to ensure that they are meeting PROMISE eligibility requirements, and she works closely with Dr. J. Robert Baker and with students in the Honors program.

During this semester, I have served on numerous committees with Dr. Schwer, and I know that her dedication to students extends beyond those she advises and teaches,” said Pamela Stephens, Coordinator of Academic Advising. “Through work on the Foundations of Excellence All Students Dimension, the First Year Experience subcommittee of the Strategic Task Force and as chair of the Liberal Studies Committee, Dr. Schwer has demonstrated her commitment to improving education for all students.”

Following is a quote about Schwer from her nomination form: “Her knowledge of the curriculum and her success in applying it in the best interests of our students makes her richly deserving of our accolades and this award. She is, in fact, precisely the kind of advisor who regularly and generously helps students make informed and wise decisions about their courses and their futures.”

Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award

Jeff Greenham has been teaching ceramics for the Art Department for the past four years as well as supervising the kiln. His education includes The Archie Brey Foundation in Helena, Mont., a B.F.A. degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology School for American Crafts and an M.F.A. degree from West Virginia University. He has worked in London and The Netherlands, and his work has been exhibited and reviewed nationally and is in many private and corporate collections in the United States. His work is represented by Smith Galleries of Hilton Head, Signature Gallery of Boston and the Contemporary Center of Torrance, Calif. In 1996, he became the Director of Ceramics at the Chautauqua School of Art, part of the Chautauqua Institution in New York, and he will be returning there this summer.

At Fairmont State, Greenham’s influence in the ceramics studio is evident as the number and quality of ceramics pieces have increased and have been included in senior art shows as well as juried student exhibitions. Last year, he mentored three art students through the application process to study ceramics in China. Those three students were there this fall semester with support from the School of Fine Arts and Student Affairs.