2009 NAGT Awards Recipients

NAGT Neil Miner Award Citation

Citationist: Barbara Tewksbury
When Cathy Manduca, Greg Hancock, and I nominated Heather Macdonald for this year's Neil Miner Award, we asked several colleagues for letters of endorsement. In his reply, Geoff Feiss (Past President of NAGT) voiced the same feeling that many of us had, "Is it really possible that Heather has not won the Neil Miner Award before, maybe several times?" We feel that it is high time to acknowledge this outstanding educator with the highest award that NAGT bestows, and we can think of no one who deserves the Neil Miner Award more than Heather.

Much as Neil Miner did both as a teacher and as a community leader, Heather has been instrumental in changing the face of geoscience education. She has worked tirelessly in the classroom, with post-docs and early career faculty, as an officer of NAGT, and through the role she has played in founding national, community-based programs for geoscience faculty, particularly On the Cutting Edgeand Building Strong Geoscience Departments. Like Neil Miner, she has done this with humor and grace for the good of all.

Heather was early to the geoscience education table. She made her case for tenure at William and Mary in 1989 based on her teaching, prior to the publication of Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered. To establish her case, she wrote papers for JGE, published volumes of teaching activities, and wrote about visiting speaker programs for the Journal of College Science Teaching. In taking this path, she demonstrated not only her passion for education, but that it was possible to be successful in a career that focuses on education.

Heather has a strong reputation at William and Mary for using and promoting novel teaching strategies, and for her ability to mentor students. She has consistently brought the latest thinking on teaching strategies to her classroom and has generously shared her experiences and ideas with other members of the faculty. For example, Heather was instrumental in developing William and Mary's University Teaching Project. In this program, William and Mary faculty from across campus who possess particular teaching strengths (e.g., leading discussion sections, use of classroom technology) are invited to provide instruction and advice to other faculty interested in improving their teaching. This instruction has taken forms such as workshops, discussion sections, and feedback based on class visitation, and has been very successful in promoting not only better teaching but also better faculty cooperation across disciplines. Since its inception in the early 1990s, this program has been very successful, and has become a model for other institutions. At the student level, Heather has proven to be an invaluable mentor for many students over the years, geology and non-geology majors both. She has excelled in particular at mentoring students who are initially not the most confident in their abilities. Through patient guidance in advising research projects and in providing advice on career choices, Heather has helped many of these students gain confidence in their abilities and has influenced fundamentally their future paths. She has in particular provided guidance to many students intending to go on in K-12 Earth science teaching.

Heather's work at the national level with NAGT in the mid-1990s helped to raise NAGT's national prominence and to improve the level of dialog about geoscience education at the national level. She was elected to the NAGT Executive Committee in 1992, and then to president of NAGT in 1996. She also served on the Executive Committee of the American Geological Institute for several years. Heather was never just a caretaker in office. In both capacities, Heather elevated the level of discourse and helped to make things really happen.

Heather was co-PI on an NSF proposal sponsored by NAGT that created NAGT's national Distinguished Speaker series in 1996 and a co-PI on second NAGT-sponsored NSF grant in 1997 to develop the first national workshop series for professional development of undergraduate geoscience faculty. In the latter grant, she worked collaboratively to develop the first iterations of the Early Career Faculty workshop and the workshop on Designing Effective and Innovative Courses in the Geosciences. Both of these workshops still survive more than 12 years later and continue as strong and highly successful components of On the Cutting Edge.

Since those early NSF proposals, Heather has continued to offer her tremendous collaborative skills and consistent vision to a number of programs that have been instrumental in changing the landscape of geoscience teaching at the college and university level. Richard Yuretich said in his supporting letter, "It is her ability to work effectively in collaboration with a wide diversity of other individuals that has made her such an effective and continued voice in support of our educational mission." It is her attention to detail and relentless pursuit of creating the highest quality of workshop experience for her fellow colleagues that have helped raise the level of professional development in the geosciences to the level seen today in On the Cutting Edge. When writing about the Early Career workshop, Richelle Allen-King said in her supporting letter, "The reason for the workshop's success stems from Heather's brilliant concept for it combined with attention to detail and improvement at every stage of implementation. I have received email messages sent by Heather in the middle of the night on numerous occasions as she works unselfishly on every detail of the workshop agenda such that no minute of the participant's time is wasted and yet it all seems effortless."

Rachel Beane spoke eloquently in the supporting letters of the way that Heather has instructed hundreds of faculty in effective pedagogy, mentoring and supporting them as they try new things and applauding their successes. There is no one in our community so well known, or so well loved by young faculty as Heather. This is the legacy of a decade of highly regarded workshops for early career faculty, and the community is now reaping the benefits of this work, as her alumni become the next generation of leaders in the geoscience education community.

Having begun by establishing that she could have a career that focused on education, Heather is now central to efforts that are changing the place of teaching in the professional lives of all geoscience faculty. Through her work with On the Cutting Edgeand Building Strong Geoscience Departments, she is helping to create a culture in which teaching is a central part of the geoscience profession, a topic of discussion, and an area where excellence informed by research and practice is valued. Heather brings to this culture-changing work the same strength that she brings to teaching both students and faculty --her attention to the details and to the individuals. Among her legacies will be a change in the status of mentoring fostered by the programs she has established, her repeated focus on its importance in departments, but more poignantly, by the sheer volume of people she has personally mentored.

We cannot think of how to say it any better than Robyn Wright Dunbar did in her supporting letter. She wrote, "In over 30 years of teaching and caring about teaching—of serving students, young career aspirants, and the profession—I think no one who can match the "giving of self" that has consistently characterized Heather's commitment and impact. But what I think helps set Heather apart from this group...is the selfless, intensely committed vision that underlies Heather's role as a teacher, a mentor, and a professional developer."

The changes that Heather has wrought in geoscience education make her eminently deserving of the Neil Miner Award.

NAGT James Shea Award Citation

Citationist: Julie Libarkin
When I was asked to write this citation for Carl, I knew immediately that I wanted to thank Carl on both a professional and personal level. Carl had a significant influence on the geoscience education community during his editorship of JGE, and his willingness to consider unusual manuscripts from unknown researchers had a significant impact on many careers. Gene Pearson summed up Carl's merit as a Shea Awardee in this way, "Carl Drummond has made exceptional contributions to the Earth Science community as both a writer and an editor. His dedication to enhancing earth science teaching is demonstrated not only by his writings, but also by his willingness to provide endless hours, of often thankless work, as an exceptional editor."

Carl served as Editor of the Journal of Geoscience Education from 1999-2008. Following in the footsteps of Jim Shea's long term as Editor, Carl continued to move the journal towards ever increasing academic rigor and scholarship. The adoption of the Associate Editor model used by most academic journals provided opportunities for new scholars, including myself, to influence the direction and nature of discourse within the community. Carl's willingness to publish new types of manuscripts, including columns on research in science education, provided additional opportunity for new voices to be heard. As one past President of NAGT noted, "Carl brought a high level of professionalism to the position of editor of JGE. He took a well-respected journal and brought it into the 21st century with flying colors. Carl brought a new vision to the position; he had the ability to see where the journal needed to go in the future and he had the organizational skills, creativity, and energy to make it happen."

In addition to transforming JGE, Carl's editorials routinely provided succinct introduction to the manuscripts published in JGE as well as discussion of important issues facing our community, including diversity, integrity, and the state of the geosciences curriculum. Carl wrote nearly fifty editorials during his tenure with JGE, many of which contain new ideas and new data supporting his positions. Some editorials, years later, still offer food for thought to geoscientists struggling to find relevance in today's world; Do We Have a 20^th or 21^st Century Curriculum from 2003 is a particularly insightful example!

Joe Elkins and I were humbled and excited to take the reins of JGE from Carl in 2008. Join us in thanking Carl for a decade of service, scholarship and engagement; JGE and our community are better for his service. And, both personally and professionally, I want to say "Thank you!"

NAGT Robert Christman Award Citation

Citationist: Scott Linneman
The Robert Christman Distinguished Service Award was established by NAGT in 2008 to recognize individuals who have provided long, distinguished service to the Association at the national and/or section level. This year's recipient of the Robert Christman Distinguished Service Award exemplifies, amazingly well, the principles spelled out in the official award description. Today I am honored, humbled and cautious about describing Bob Christman's career of service. Honored because I count Bob and Bess among my friends and surrogate grandparents to my kids. Humbled by the prolific nature of his career as a geoscience educator. And cautious because I don't want you to hesitate nominating a deserving NAGT member because he or she may have served well, but "isn't a Christman".

When I joined NAGT (the first time) as a graduate teaching assistant, I sent my $15 to the NAGT office in Bellingham. My JGE's came from Bellingham. I reasoned that there must be a sizable association presence in the city of subdued excitement. Years later, when I interviewed to join the WWU faculty, I discovered that the "sizable presence" was an emeritus desk, some space in the basement and a tireless guy who wore shorts all year.

Because this award is about service to the association, I won't dwell on Bob's non-NAGT achievements (2 degrees from Michigan; Princeton PhD; 4 years at USGS; 5 years at Cornell; 34 years at WWU during which he ran externally-funded teacher workshops every summer from 1961 to 1995; former president of the Washington Science Teachers Association and editor of its journal for 25 years). Rather, I would like to highlight his NAGT career: Bob served as President of the Pacific Northwest section in 1974 and 1975 and has served as the section's Secretary/Treasurer since 1976, including during its resurrection in the last 10 years. He was also an associate editor of the Journal of Geoscience Education from 1979 until 1987, contributing dozens of film reviews and writing a column for secondary school teachers. Bob has served the national executive committee as a Councilor-at-Large [1982-84], Secretary/Treasurer [1989-91], and Executive Director [1991-2005]. It was this last post that has most challenged the association to figure out how to replace all that this man did in his spare time (did I mention that he also volunteers for his church, grows a huge garden and makes 50 gallons of wine every year?).

All volunteer organizations exist because of the hard work of their members. But some serve in a truly distinguished way. I suspect you know a few such people and I ask you to consider making a future nomination. But today I ask you to please join me in honoring the inaugural recipient of the Robert Christman Distinguished Service Award: Bob Christman.