OCR Text |
Show B4 Wednesday, May 7, 2008 Vernal Express gradoation exercises Ahandful of community members, mem-bers, students, and professors were recognized during Utah State University-Uintah Basin's graduation ceremony late last month for their, contributions to the school. Roosevelt resident Areva Huish received the Director's Award for decades of helping foster local higher education programs. A long-time friend of USU-Uintah Basin, Areva and her late husband, Bob, have made numerous donations to the school. These donations have directly impacted the lives of countless students and helped make the campus what it is today. to-day. Huish graduated from Brigham Young University in 1939 with a degree in elementary education. She moved to the Basin, where she began teaching teach-ing second grade at Roosevelt Elementary. After work, Huish and her coworkers would drop in at the drug store for a soda and a chance to unwind. As fate would have it, Huish Drugstore was owned by the parents of Bob Huish. He noticed Areva, and the pair quickly fell in love. After marrying, Bob was shipped off to serve in the Navy during World War II. While he was gone, Areva helped fill in at the drugstore. She learned how to fill prescriptions prescrip-tions for people and animals, and continued to work there after her husband returned from the war. After their retirement in 1973, the Huishes traveled the world together. Huish said some of her most impressionable memories include a trip down the Nile River, climbing the Acropolis in Greece, and walking the Great Wall of China. Many of the artifacts that the Huishes have collected during dur-ing their travels and their life together in the Basin are now on display at the USU-Uintah Basin student center in Roosevelt. Other awards given at the USU-Uintah Basin commencement commence-ment ceremony are as follows: Outstanding Student BreAna Hansen-Shield was chosen as one of this year's outstanding students because of her passion for academic excellence. excel-lence. A Vernal resident, Hansen-Shield Hansen-Shield earned an associate's degree while attending high school at Uintah High. Thisyear, she graduated from USU-Uintah Basin with a double major in history and liberal arts. And as if a double major didn't add enough to an already-full plate, she also graduated with two minors: one in sociology, the other in political science. Amazingly, Amaz-ingly, she accomplished all of this while being employed full-time at Western Petroleum. Despite the variety of Hansen-Shield's Hansen-Shield's academic path, she said her first love is history. This love for history helped her achieve academic excellence in her senior research seminar, where she studied the uses of patronage by a noble family at the court of King Henry VIII of England. Her work analyzes how Viscount Lisle and his wife sought to get ahead in government and Tudor society by the judicious use of gifts and favors. Hansen-Shield's mentors have said her research is both fascinating and extremely sophisticated so-phisticated in its reasoning. Joseph Foster was the second graduate to be recognized with an Outstanding Student Award. The first thing one should know about Foster is that he n LlL Mm I J Hanging Baskets Plants Trees Garden deeor Q.ft Basin Nursery 5 1 so n vemoi iwe Certificates Garden Center jswoo JuLTL JUL IT LIU Swing Country Rock'n Roll - Latin A Performance of Song and Dance Presented by Stagelight NT w V s, v. 7 i 1 v i.V'A GetM Directed by: Lana Muir, Diana Eddington, and Hyrum Winterton Thursday May 8th & Friday May 9th 7:00 p.m. Roosevelt Jr. High School 350 W. 200 S., Roosevelt oiii Out For Mothers Bay FREE to the public Uintah Basin Medical Center Improving Healthcare for the Basin L -1Basin Medical 1 wishes it were still the 18th Century and that he was living in the Scottish Highlands. Foster is a true romantic; he loves his family's Scottish roots. He also has a full dress Scottish kilt and is not afraid to wear it. At USU-Uintah Basin, Foster majored in history and minored in English. In his senior research seminar, he explored some of his interests in Scottish history by examining the months of the captivity cap-tivity of Mary Queen of Scots. Foster's professors have said they are impressed with his knowledge knowl-edge of world literature, as well as his keen intellect, impressive range of knowledge, and inquisitive inquisi-tive and innovative approach to scholarship. Outstanding Faculty Member Colleen Jones, one of two recipients of the Outstanding Faculty Member Award, has been a full-time adjunct instructor for USU since 2004. Students and co-workers will tell you that she is a dynamic, committed addition ad-dition to the science faculty at USU-Uintah Basin. Her courses are broadcast to hundreds of students each semester - something some-thing that creates a demanding teaching load. Despite the distance between her and some of her students, Jones works hard to make sure that each student can participate in activities and experiments no matter where they are: She provides pro-vides take-home labs to remote sites to help students learn and practice outside of class, including includ-ing rocks for geology labs and colored beans for genetic variation varia-tion demonstrations. Jones is continually involved in improving opportunities for her students to do science-related activities on a daily basis. Most recently, she arranged for a Channel 2 weather station to be located at the new Vernal USU building, currently under construction. Local students will now be able to participate in hands-on weather experiments. Clare Beelman also received re-ceived the Outstanding Faculty Award. As the professor of challenging challeng-ing science classes like microbiology, microbiol-ogy, human physiology, genetics, and biochemistry, Beelman has worked hard to make all of these courses accessible for her students. Students say she tries to find creative ways to approach learning. learn-ing. Her teaching style connects the class materials with issues in students' lives. "Last semester's physiology class was one of the most informative infor-mative classes I have ever taken, " said a student recently enrolled one of Beelman's courses. "She is a gifted instructor." Beelman also believes undergraduate un-dergraduate research is an important part of the science program at USU-Uintah Basin. She regularly mentors any number num-ber of undergraduate students with their research projects and helped organize the Uintah Basin Research Conference. Outstanding Staff Member To most people at USU-Uin tah Basin, Joseph Hunting is a technological godsend. As USU computer techWebmaster, he handles most of the computer requests at the school. He also helped propel USU-Uintah Basin Ba-sin into the Internet era when he created the rst-ever Web site specifically for the branch campus in the 1990s. With an associate's degree in applied science and a bachelor's in business information systems, sys-tems, Hunting is well-qualified to handle any problems that might come his way. He said he enjoys working with students, and more than one graduate has told him he or she would never have graduated if it hadn't been for all the help he provided them over the years. "He has become our jack-of-all-trades," said an office assistant. assis-tant. "Joe is our tech hero." Outstanding Professional Staff Member When Dave Woolstenhulme, one of two recipients of the Outstanding Professional Staff Member Award, took over as interim director of USU-Uintah Basin in May 2007, he was ready for a challenge. But his past service as an advisor, instructor, and director of student services could not have prepared him for the level of challenge he would face. In a period of great financial challenge and administrative scrutiny, Woolstenhulme has helped to design and implement a mutually beneficial budget. With the assistance of the business office in Logan and Tammy Wilk-erson, Wilk-erson, he also instituted entirely new accounting and scholarship awarding processes. Woolstenhulme has played an integral role in helping restructure restruc-ture the concurrent education program. He has worked tirelessly tire-lessly to ensure the continued existence of this program in the face of allocation shortfalls. Campus andcommunitybeau-tification andcommunitybeau-tification has been another one of Woolstenhulme's key focuses. He has instituted campus-wide clean up days each spring and played a central role in supporting April's U.S. Highway 40 cleanup. Tammy Wilkerson was also named one of this year's outstanding out-standing professional staff members mem-bers for her dedicated service to the students, administration, faculty, and staff of USU-Uintah Basin. Colleagues say Wilkerson has worked tirelessly behind. the scenes implementing an entirely new accounting process, managing manag-ing accounts, coordinating budgets, bud-gets, trackingteaching loads, and monitoring other transactions vital to the day-to-day business of the university. Wilkerson was also instrumental instru-mental in working with the local director of scholarships to correct the scholarship accounts and streamline the awarding process. She has improved the billing procedure for the concurrent concur-rent enrollment program and has coordinated with the business office in Logan to invoice and correct concurrent enrollment accounts. As her nominator wrote, "Tam my easily leaps buildings in single bounds, sometimes so easily that we have come to expect miracles from her as a matter of course." Researcher of the Year Award Since coming to USU-Uintah Basin in 2001, David Law has dedicated a great deal of time to research. As an assistant professor of family, consumer, and human development, he has co-authored four articles in top-ranked journals for marriage and family relations, co-authored one book and a chapter in an edited book, and presented at 10 national conferences. In an effort to help strengthen the community, Law has presented present-ed some of his research findings at community-based workshops designed to help people improve marital and family relations. However, Law's primary focus since coming to the Basin is furthering fur-thering the parenting program he co-developed entitled, "Love, Limits, and Latitude: A Thousand Small Moments of Parenting." About 200 local parents have participated in the class so far. Friends of RCDEA Award 2008 Since beginning his tenure in the Basin in 2003, Rob Be-hunin Be-hunin has filled multiple shoes, including associate executive director of the USU-Uintah Basin Ba-sin campus, teacher, liaison to local government officials, and the first advancement officer at USU-Uintah Basin. He now serves under USU President Stan Albrecht as assistant to the president for special projects. In this position, Behunin works closely with various vari-ous groups to ensure a productive produc-tive relationship between the university and the community Behunin's fundraising efforts ef-forts have enabled significant growth in the Uintah Basin, including acquisition of modern instrumentation for science instruction and research, the Uintah Basin Applied Technology Technol-ogy CollegeUSU-Uintah Basin Vernal buildings, the Bingham Fnf rnnron on rcVii n onrl TT.normr Research Center, roads and infrastructure, infra-structure, faculty endowments, and scholarship opportunities for students in the Basin. Behunin said he is adamant about the fact that nothing great happens in isolation and believes firmly in the,kvalue, of .creating strong allianpes and partner-; ships. Our Ads are worth the time in the... VEffMAL 'xpress 54 North Vernal Avenue Vernal, Utah -435-789-3511 www.vernal.com ' i, C fr. . 5 . i I j fK X . . . 4 A ! r f 250 W. 300 N. Roosevelt 722-4691 41 Center 1 tizUthlzkki |