The long-established honors, the Outstanding Professor and Scholar of the Year awards, will be given respectively to Biology Professor Jacob Varkey and Wildlife Management Professor Matthew Johnson.
The new categories, Excellence in Teaching and Outstanding Service, will recognize respectively Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences Lecturer Jeffrey Dunk and Nursing Professor Marshelle Thobaben. The Excellence in Teaching award is expressly for lecturers.
All four 2009/2010 faculty honors are conferred by the Academic Senate’s Faculty Awards Committee and approved by President Rollin Richmond.
Varkey, who joined HSU in 1994, is named Outstanding Professor for “superlative teaching, mentoring, research and creative activities.” These include his service to under-represented students in the ‘STEM’ fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Varkey also is credited with creating and building a biotechnology infrastructure that has enabled Humboldt State to offer the latest coursework in molecular biology.
Johnson began teaching wildlife management at HSU in 1999 and is recognized as the 2009/2010 Scholar of the Year for “intense engagement with students, highly productive research and applications of his work to integrating human and wildlife needs,” according to the committee. A specialist in wildlife habitat relationships and tropical wildlife ecology, Johnson won early recognition in his Humboldt State career with a McCrone Promising Young Scholar Award in 2004.
A lecturer in wide-ranging classes since1993, Dunk receives the inaugural award for Excellence in Teaching for encouraging students to be active participants in their education and engaging them deeply in their subjects. Dunk’s teaching evaluation scores are uniformly high across courses. His students say he connects with diverse perspectives in the classroom and “this effectively promotes engagement with environmental issues.”
The new Outstanding Service Award goes to Thobaben for “broad, distinguished and sustained” work on behalf of the University nursing program and the entire California State University system. Thobaben is former chair and vice chair of the Academic Senate, former chair of the Nursing Department, former head of the CSU Faculty Affairs Committee and former chair of the CSU Academic Senate. She has served on more than 60 CSU and other statewide committees. She also has been active with the Association of University Women and its annual Women of Achievement Awards having previously received the AAUW achievement award.
Refreshments will be served at the reception. Musical accompaniment will be provided by the HSU Jazz Trio, Music Professor Dan Aldag conducting, with students Joel Bettancourt at the piano, Yanaki Lopez on drums and Sam Roberts on bass. Ceremonies are open to students and the public.