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Dr. Linda Spatig |
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Linda Spatig is a native of Hopewell,
Virginia, a small town located between Richmond
and Petersburg resting on the western edge of
the Tidewater region of the Old Dominion.
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In
completing her formal education, she received a
B.S. degree in 1971 from Barton College in
Wilson, North Carolina; a Masters of Education
degree in 1974 from Western Washington State
University; and she completed her studies by
receiving a Doctorate in Education from the
University of Houston in 1986. |
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Our
Drinko Fellow joined the Marshall University
faculty in 1987 and presently is a Professor in
the School of Education in the College of
Education and Human Services, holding a joint
appointment in the Doctoral Leadership Studies
program housed on our South Charleston Campus. |
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About Dr. Linda Spatig |
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Dr. Spatig has been a truly active faculty member, holding
numerous elected and appointed positions on the departmental,
collegiate and university levels. And she is especially
noted for being an outstanding teacher and a helpful colleague. |
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Despite carrying an arduous teaching load which includes
serving as the Chair of six doctoral committees and as a
committee member on six others, her contributions to University
service has been impressive. It entails past and present service
on the Center for Teaching Excellence Advisory Board, The
Research and Faculty Development Committees, the University
Honors Council, the University Faculty Senate and presently as
Co-Director of the University’s Center for the Study of
Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia. |
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Our Drinko Fellow is also an effective researcher and a
prodigious scholar. While here at Marshall, she has
produced nearly a score of scholarly publications and delivered
45 Academic presentations at regional, state and National
Conferences. Additionally, she is an Associate Editor of
the Journal of Appalachian Studies, is a member of the Editorial
Board of the Journal of Educational Foundations and a program
reviewer for the Governor’s Cabinet on Children and Families. |
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The bulk of her scholarship rests in the area of
Educational Foundations with emphasis on social context issues
(including gender, race and class) as these societal factors
relate to the Appalachian Culture. |
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Perhaps her most significant work involves her mentoring
(saving) young girls in Appalachia. In this capacity, she
has served as a Qualitative Researcher consultant for the
Lincoln County Girls Resiliency Program and as a Director of the
High Rocks Academy which provides similar services for young
girls in Nicholas, Pocahontas and Greenbrier Counties. (Part of
the Mountain State’s most rural areas) |
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Of all of her good works, and there are many, her
endeavors in support of young Appalachian girls is perhaps her
noblest mission. Her efforts on behalf of otherwise
overlooked youth brings to mind lines from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy
Written in a Country Church-Yard” This is a poignant poem,
the burden of which muses over how England, owing to isolation,
class prejudice, and lack of opportunity, lost, as the poet
states, the services of potential Hamptons, Miltons and
Cromwells. As Gray expressed it, “Full many a flower is
born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on desert air.” |
Like many others, Dr. Linda Spatig has dedicated herself
to eradicating Gray’s dreaded inevitability. For, by her
mentoring she inspires young Appalachian girls to realize more
fully their potential, by her research she encourages fellow
educators to emulate her lead, and by her teaching she motivates
her students to follow in her footsteps.
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