By Mike Lehman, TTU Sports Information & Kyle Schwartz, OVC Media Relations
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – The winners of the Ohio Valley Conference's inaugural Outstanding Faculty Commitment to Student Success Awards have been announced.
The awards were created by the Provosts from each OVC member institution to recognize outstanding faculty at each OVC member institution. The recipients were recently announced at the 2023 OVC Basketball Championship, and an award will be sent to each school so the winners can be honored on their own campus.
Each OVC member institution had the opportunity to nominate a faculty member with the rank of associate or full-time professor who has been employed at the institution for at least five years.
The criteria included impacts of students, contributions made to the department, university and curriculum development, consistent professional development as well as community involvement and institutional service.
Earning the inaugural honor for Tennessee Tech was Dr. Julie C. Baker, a professor in the College of Education who has served in the department since 2006. An active scholar who regularly contributes to curriculum development and research, she has revised curriculum and developed new programs. Currently, she is part of a team who developed and proposed a new Ph.D. program in Higher Education.
This academic year, she also served as part of a team who revised the College's early childhood licensure programs. She serves as Pl on two Grow Your Own grants that total $1 million. These grants are to increase the number of people pursuing teaching as a profession and take a good deal of coordination to manage. She was awarded the Wings Up 100 Award for two consecutive years for her work on the Grow Your Own grants and was also part of a nationwide team examining teacher preparedness with researchers from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Baker is also active with service. She has served on 23 doctoral dissertation committees in the past ten years. She serves on numerous committees at Tennessee Tech such as the Advisement Task Force, All University Recruitment Committee, Tennessee Tech Athletics Hall of Fame Committee, TTU Athletics Committee, University Curriculum Committee, Teacher Education Committee, and more. She has also been active in service to the Tennessee Department of Education and the Putnam County School System.
She served as president of the Tennessee Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, which is a six-year term, with two years as president-elect, two years as president, and two years as past president. In 2020-2021, Dr. Baker was awarded Tennessee Tech's Outstanding Diversity Advocate which recognizes faculty who lead by example in providing exceptional mentoring as well as social and academic support to minority students.
Dr. Baker is currently the founding faculty advisor for the student organization Center for Diversity Education (CODE). CODE is an organization founded by a group of student-athletes who wanted to connect local police with students so that both groups could learn about each other to develop better community relations. She also developed a service learning course to help facilitate this work for the students.
This year's recipients are:
University of Arkansas at Little Rock: Dr. Angela N. Hunter, Associate Professor, English Eastern Illinois University: Dr. William C. Minnis, Associate Professor of Management Lindenwood University: Dr. Kathryn A. Tessmer, Professor, Exercise Science Morehead State University: Dr. Lisa Shannon, Professor of Social Work Southeast Missouri State University: Dr. Lea Anne Lambert, Instructor, Kinesiology, Nutrition & Recreation Southern Illinois University Edwardsville: Dr. Kelly N. Gable, Professor and Director of Well-being and Resilience University of Southern Indiana: Emily R. Holt, Clinical Professor of Dental Hygiene and Dental Assisting Tennessee State University: Dr. Katrina Newsom, Assistant Professor, English Tennessee Technological University: Dr. Julie C. Baker, Professor, College of Education University of Tennessee at Martin: Dr. Mahmoud Haddad, Professor, Finance
