FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Contact: Dave Wellman, Director of Communications, (304) 696-7153
 

Mills is Hedrick Outstanding Faculty Award winner;
Reynolds, Pickens-Queen winners also announced

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Dr. David Mills, interim chair of Marshall University’s History Department and an associate professor specializing in the modern Middle East, is MU’s Dr. Charles E. Hedrick Outstanding Faculty Award winner for 2007-08. The announcement came from Marshall’s Office of Academic Affairs.

Mills will receive $5,000 through a grant from Charles B. and Mary Jo Locke Hedrick. The award is named in honor of Charles Hedrick’s father, Charles E. Hedrick, a former history professor and later Chairman of the Graduate Council, and one of the founders of Marshall’s graduate program.

Two other awards honoring four faculty members also were announced: They include:

• Marshall & Shirley Reynolds Outstanding Teacher Award: Dr. Evelyn Pupplo-Cody, professor, Department of Mathematics.
• Pickens-Queen Excellence in Teaching Award: Dr. E. Del Chrol, assistant professor, Classics Department; Dr. Phillip T. Rutherford, assistant professor, History Department; Dr. David Winter, assistant professor, History Department.

All five award winners will be formally recognized during the spring general faculty meeting, which begins at 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 29 at the Joan C. Edwards Performing Arts Center on the Huntington campus.

Here is a brief look at the three awards and the five winners:

Hedrick Award

This award recognizes a full-time faculty member who has a minimum of seven years teaching experience at Marshall and has a record of outstanding classroom teaching, scholarship, research and creative activities.

Dr. David Mills has been at Marshall since 1996 when he was hired as an assistant professor of history. He has been an associate professor of history since 2003.

Mills received his B.A. in History (Honors) and Germanic Languages and Literature from the University of Kansas in 1990, his M.A. in Modern Middle Eastern History from the University of Utah in 1993, and his Ph.D. in Modern Middle Eastern History from the University of Utah in 1997.

Dr. Montserrat Miller, an associate professor of history at Marshall, has worked alongside Mills since 1996 when they both joined the department. She said the university is “tremendously fortunate to have him as a member of its faculty.”

“David Mills’ teaching is nothing short of astonishing,” Miller said. She also said Mills is “an outstanding colleague and a talented and committed professor.”

Dr. Robert Sawrey, a professor of history at Marshall, was department chair when Mills was hired. He remembers that Mills originally was hired to a one-year appointment without the typical scrutiny of a tenure track search.

“That of course made us a bit nervous, but the department has never had a moment of doubt that the decision was an excellent one,” Sawrey said. “The following year we did conduct a national search for the Middle East position before concluding that the best candidate was indeed David Mills.”

Twelve years later, Sawrey describes Mills as “a superb, well-rounded faculty member who takes all aspects of his work seriously and excels at all of them.”

Mills’ teaching approach is simple.

“Overall, you could characterize my approach to teaching as exposing students to the information, forcing/encouraging students to question that information, having students react and write about that information, and repeating these steps as often as possible,” he said.

Repetition, Mills said, is important in his lectures. “Accomplishing my teaching objective of effectively conveying historical knowledge via lectures is reinforced through repetition,” he said.

Reynolds Award

The Reynolds Award includes a $3,000 stipend, and all full-time faculty members who have completed six or more years of service at Marshall are eligible.

Dr. Evelyn Pupplo-Cody has been a full professor in Marshall’s Department of Mathematics since 1999. She came to Marshall in 1989 as an assistant professor.

Dr. Ralph W. Oberste-Vorth, professor and chair in the Department of Mathematics, described Pupplo-Cody as “a team player, a dedicated educator, and a valuable asset to the department and the university.”

Oberste-Vorth said Pupplo-Cody’s student evaluations are consistently among the very best in the department. “She has shown repeatedly that she is dedicated to her students,” he said. “Unlike many popular instructors, she always covers the material of the course completely and never gives undeserved grades. She is popular because she effectively communicates with her students – they learn!”

Pupplo-Cody said she wants her students to know that mathematics is doable and that it is the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement. She also hopes that her students learn from her classes that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

“I hope that some of my enthusiasm is shared by my students,” she said.

Pickens-Queen Award

Each of these three award winners receives a $1,000 stipend. The award honors outstanding junior faculty. All faculty members teaching on a full-time, tenured or tenure track appointment who are at the instructor or assistant professor rank and who have completed one to five years of service at Marshall are eligible.

Dr. E. Del Chrol is an assistant professor in Marshall’s Classics Department. He was nominated by Dr. Caroline A. Perkins, chair of the Classics Department, for the Pickens-Queen Award in only his third semester at Marshall. He came to MU from the University of Southern California.

 “He is a world-class teacher and shows great potential as a scholar,” Perkins said. “His classes are innovative and well thought out. His classroom is an exciting place to be. He engages students well in active learning.”

And, Perkins said, “His students love him.”

One of those students, Zachary Farrell, has had Chrol for four different classes. He remembers well the first day of Latin 101 when Chrol conducted nearly the entire class in Latin, “compelling his students to learn the basics of Latin greetings.”

“He has repeatedly proven himself to be perhaps the most dynamic, clear, and dedicated teacher I’ve ever had,” Farrell said.

Rebecca Wise, another student, described Chrol as “an exceptionally gifted teacher who exhibits infectious love for his field and who is patient and generous with his time.”

Dr. Phillip T. Rutherford, an assistant professor of European History, joined Marshall’s faculty in August 2006. Dr. Montserrat Miller, an associate professor of history at MU, said she quickly became aware of “the breadth of knowledge he possesses in his area, the skill he brings to the classroom, and his dedication to all our students.”

Rutherford describes his teaching style as essentially “conversational.”

“I converse with the students in the class, and together, we converse with the historical material in question. Within this ongoing conversation, I tend to approach history as ‘philosophical through examples.’ ” He said his primary goal in the classroom is not just to propose but to prove that the past matters and that it matters a great deal.

Dr. Donna Spindel, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said Rutherford is engaging, smart and energetic, and “has the ability to challenge his students to do better than they think they can do.”

History student Amanda Stevens said Rutherford has done nothing short of completely transforming the European studies section of the history department since coming to Marshall.

“Whereas before these courses were somewhat stale, unchanging from one year to the next, Dr. Rutherford has transfused them with a life and vitality I have never before seen in them, and such that is still hard to find in other classes,” Stevens said.

Assistant Professor of History Dr. David Winter is in his third year at Marshall. Associate Professor Dr. Kat Williams nominated him for the Pickens-Queen Award.

“He is an experienced and exemplary teacher and an asset to the History Department and its students,” Williams said. “His classroom is always filled with a mixture of seriousness and humor which clearly makes it a comfortable place for students.”

Winter said it is his fundamental belief that students can and want to learn. His teaching format has been mixed lecture and discussion. He also believes that writing should be one of the fundamental requirements of attaining a Bachelor of Arts degree.

“Although they are not job-training institutions, universities and colleges must be aware of the world they are sending their graduates into,” he said.

Student Rebecca Wise said she is extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from Winter.

“His eagerness to help students is warm and genuine, and his students can tell,” Wise said. “He is renowned for his politeness. Professor Winter is also hilarious, and his teaching is more effective for it. A carefully placed joke can make a point memorable better than any mnemonic.”

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