Faculty Focus
Teaching for the Times
Sometimes, teaching is just in your blood.
Even before she came to ASU six years ago, Mona Dawson was teaching, just not in a traditional classroom setting. First as a corporate nurse for a company in Victoria and then at Yoakum Community Hospital in south central Texas, she passed on her knowledge of caring for older adults as well as other important subjects to young nurses.
“My mother, who was one of 15 children, always had me around my grandparents and older adults,” Dawson said. “So, the elderly, care giving, death and dying were a natural part of my growing up. When I decided to become a nurse, the natural fit for me was to work towards becoming a geriatric nurse practitioner (GNP).”
Already with a background in teaching, it was an easier jump to her position as an assistant clinical professor in the ASU Nursing Department. She joined the faculty after taking a pharmacology class at ASU toward her GNP certification.
“One of the instructors teaching the class asked me if I had ever thought about teaching,” Dawson said. “I told them that I taught all the time, but I had never thought about actually ‘teaching.’ So, I applied, interviewed and got hired.”
Currently, Dawson instructs mainly first-year RN students in geriatric care and supervises their clinical rotations at the Baptist Memorials Center and its Sagecrest Alzheimer’s Care Center in San Angelo.
“I love teaching first year students!” Dawson said. “The Nursing Department has expanded my role and opportunities in being able to teach students about geriatrics, the older and frail elder population. It will not matter what setting they choose or what field of nursing they enter, they are going to see my population of patients. It is important to me that they have some understanding of how to help older adults.”
That dedication to her students and ASU has been noticed as Dawson was nominated for a 2010 ASU President’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Leadership/Service.
As a certified geriatric nurse practitioner with a background in geriatric care and research, Dawson was also a logical choice to be named director of the new Caregiver Research Institute at ASU’s recently-opened Center for Community Wellness, Engagement and Development.
“I have been given an incredible opportunity to do something with my passion,” Dawson said. “The situation we have today in regards to care giving is unprecedented. So, providing nursing care to older adults, helping caregivers decrease stress and researching ways in which nurses can help the aging population will be the focus of the institute.”
Her position at the institute also gives Dawson the opportunity to be on the front lines for the rapidly approaching “silver tsunami” entrance of the baby boomer generation into geriatric care starting in 2011.
“We’ve got resources, which will probably be dwindling over the next few years, and we have many providers who may have to change the way they practice,” Dawson said. “But, for the most part, what we don’t have is the ‘connective tissue’ that can produce an individualized plan of care for these caregivers. It is it truly amazing what is out there in the way of help that caregivers do not know about or know how to access. Caregiver access and understanding will be two of the major issues that we will try to tackle at the institute. We want caregivers to leave us saying ‘OK that works. I get it, I understand, that makes me feel better.’”
And, the institute is not just for professional caregivers, it is primarily for family members and informal caregivers who are caring for elderly parents, spouses or other family members.
“The focus out of this office will be older adults and frail elders,” Dawson said. “People didn’t used to live this long, and we don’t know how to deal with it. There are a bazillion different scenarios and we are simply not prepared for this unprecedented tsunami that is coming. So, hopefully some of that help will come out of this institute.”
In recognition of the influence Dawson has already had on local geriatric care, she was honored with the 2009 Community Partner Award from the Area Agency on Aging of the Concho Valley.
Dawson’s husband, Michael, is a landman who works from their ranch in Sanderson. They have three grown kids, Autry, 29, Katheryn, 27, and Adam, 26.
Interested in a Career in Nursing?
Paying it Forward
Dr. Alaric Williams appreciates the support he received in his quest for a doctorate and on the road to a teaching career, so he is paying it forward.
The assistant professor in the ASU Department of Curriculum and Instruction had aspirations from an early age to earn a doctorate, something most people wouldn’t expect from a child in a small town like Stamps, Ark.
“When I was in the first or second grade,” Williams said, “I would write ‘Dr. Williams’ on my video games. I thought while growing up, because my parents said I had to go as far as I could, that everyone had to do that.”
“My faith is the first thing my parents taught me, and then it was the need for education,” he said. “I like working with the younger kids because I want them to see that maybe someone like them can be successful.”
Born and raised in Stamps, about 35 miles east of Texarkana, Williams went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, a master’s in counseling and a doctorate in higher education-supervision, curriculum and instruction at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Recently, he elevated his and ASU’s name in his field when he was named national chair of the Student Affairs Partnering With Academic Affairs knowledge community, a sub-group of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), after two years as a member and two years on the ASU faculty.
“We do a series of conference calls on best practices and things that we are doing at our respective institutions,” Williams said. “I’m really excited about being elected to the office. I think it’s a good way to get Angelo State’s name out there. A lot of people don’t know where San Angelo is and have never heard of Angelo State, so I think it’s a good thing for the university.”
“One of the things we did this past semester here in the College of Education was implement graduate student orientation,” he added. “You hear about orientation for undergraduate and transfer students, but not for graduate students. A lot of the time, graduate students get lost in the shuffle and don’t understand the simplest things in regards to graduate school assignments and class expectations.”
Williams said he told his NASPA colleagues about the program and they are interested in what ASU is doing.
“They said ‘wow. We want to hear more about this,’” he said, “and things I hear at the convention, I pass along here to my ASU colleagues.”
Outside of class, Williams gives his time to support young people though advisory roles.
“I want the students to know I’m a big supporter of theirs,” he said. “I’m a faculty adviser for the Black Student Alliance, a new student organization. I also serve as co-adviser for the Student Government Association.”
Williams is not just involved with youth on campus, but also in the community and at his church.
“I just became a Big Brother in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters,” he said. “I’m also working with the House of Faith conducting research on their results when students come and are participating and how that affects them down the road. Are they successful in school? I’m looking at the results of what they do and how it affects students in their families and their communities.”
At church, Williams serves as deacon, director of youth education and trustee.
“I like knowing that I can make a difference, and not for self-glory, but knowing I can be someone else’s light. I can help someone get to where I am. My purpose here is to serve others. That’s what I do.”
Another area of interest for Williams is how African-American men deal with counseling.
“A lot of men, especially African-American men, don’t favor counseling and tend to shy away from it,” he said. “It’s not just the feeling that they are not macho or that they’re unmanly. It’s also a feeling of not being able to trust the person they are talking with. In my dissertation, I looked at African-American males who were enrolled in predominately white institutions and others who were enrolled in predominately black institutions.”
He found it made little difference whether his subjects talked to black counselors or white counselors. They shied away equally from counseling on campus.
“I discovered that their religion played a role in their deciding to speak to someone,” Williams said. “They are more comfortable talking with their ministers. I also found that they are even more comfortable talking to friends in a social setting, like a fraternity or the barber shop. They would open up more.”
Williams is studying the effects on research participants’ attitudes toward other races after taking an online diversity course and incorporated it into his Social and Cultural Influences in Learning course.
“We cover things like standardized tests biases, racism and stereotypes that may or may not be present,” he said. “I had one student who was a teacher in public school who said after taking the course that it really opened her eyes.
“Every teacher in the school system needs to take this course,” she said.
Williams said he was proud and excited that she had that attitude after taking it.
In his spare time, Dr. Williams loves spending time with his wife, Andrea, and their three boys, Michael, Alaric Jr. and Aaron.
“I like to spend time riding bikes, walking, going to the park and just having family movie night most of the time,” he said. “My wife and kids were my biggest support group while completing my doctorate. I am more than thankful I had them in my corner.”
Interested in a Career in Education?
Teaching Excellence
Ellen Moreland always wanted to be a teacher.
Now, she is recognized as one of the best in the nation.
In November of 2009, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education named her the Texas Professor of the Year. As a senior instructor in the ASU Mathematics Department, Moreland is fulfilling her ambition in a way that is bringing multiple honors to her and the university.
“I am very pleased to have won for Angelo State because I think it is a way of getting our name out there,” Moreland said. “I think there are far too many people who don’t realize what a great university this really is. I’m very happy and proud to have received it, but I think anybody in this department could have gotten it. We have a great department.”
And, the Carnegie Award is just the latest honor for Moreland, whose resumé includes a 2001 ASU Teaching Excellence Award and the inaugural Texas Tech University System Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award for ASU in 2009.
The Long Island native, who grew up dreaming of being a teacher, took a rather circuitous route to achieve that dream. After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Clarkson College of Technology, Moreland spent the first phase of her adult life traveling with her military husband, Patrick. Along the way, she worked as an actuary and in a law office, then finally got a taste of teaching when Patrick was stationed in Germany, where she went to work for branches of the University of Maryland and Boston University at various U.S. military bases.
“It was for Army soldiers and they are up and going early,” Moreland said. “So, I might have a 6 a.m. class on one base in one direction, then get in the car and drive to a lunchtime class in a second city, and then have a dinnertime class in a third city. So, I would go about 200 miles a day, but I loved it, loved the travel and had fun working with the soldiers.”
After Patrick retired from the Army in 1982, he landed a job with Ethicon Inc. So, the couple headed to San Angelo and started a family. In 1988, Moreland decided to go back to school to get her Texas high school teaching certification and resume her quest to become a full-time teacher. Her timing turned out to be perfect. When she showed up at ASU to register for classes, she ended up being hired as an instructor instead.
“That was the year the Developmental Math class opened and (then-department head) Dr. Johnny Bailey needed somebody to teach it,” Moreland said. “Once I got here, I loved it. I love the kids and I love the school.”
Over the years, Moreland has added other courses to her repertoire and now teaches everything from Developmental Math to Business Math to the capstone course for seniors in the secondary teacher certification program. Since she started teaching the capstone course, every student who has completed the program has passed the teacher certification test on the first try. While she credits that success for her growing list of teaching awards, she thinks it also has a lot to do with her relationship with her students.
“If you come by my office in the morning, they are all over the place,” she said. “They are sitting on the floor and we have to move everything off my desk to make room. That is the big thing to me. I teach for the kids. I’m just not one who can turn a kid away. If they want to learn, I am going to help them.”
Basically, Moreland just loves being a teacher and particularly being a teacher at ASU. Patrick is retired now and the couple’s daughter, Kimberly, is a senior exercise science major at ASU. With now more than 20 years on the Angelo State faculty, there is no place she would rather be.
“I love the kids and I love being surrounded by them” Moreland said. “I love ASU and I think it is a wonderful school. I think the kids get a great education here compared to a lot of the big colleges and I think we have some of the best teachers anywhere on this campus.”
“As a kid, I used to play school all the time and I always had to be the teacher,” she added. “Now that I have become a teacher again, I would never dream of leaving it.”
Interested in a career in Mathematics?
Social Researcher
The explosion of social media in recent years naturally drew the attention of Dr. Lana Marlow, an ASU assistant professor of communication and graduate adviser, who is turning her research focus to the trend in flux.
The social media issues she is exploring now differ greatly from her doctoral research at the University of Texas on how communication affects and changes the lives of women in prison. She focused for many years on her dissertation subject, “Mothers in Prison, Women’s Autobiography, and Activism,” which resulted in a book on the subject published in 2009.
“I’m turning the page and looking at some of the social media and interpersonal communications,” Marlow said, “and where we are going with that. It’s not as depressing as the prison research, but it is important.”
Marlow said social networking affects everyday relationships that are maintained or end through social media sites cell-phone texting.
“I’m interested to see where that goes,” she said. “Sometimes, people break up relationships by “defriending” each other on Facebook. You don’t even have to do anything. You don’t have to say ‘you’re not my friend.’ You just change your status or erase them from your page.”
Marlow said some people narrate their lives via social media like Facebook, Twitter or texting and she wonders what that leaves for them to talk about when they meet face to face. Another social media area she is looking at is Internet access and how it affects student research.
“When I first started teaching, students would go to the library,” she said. “It would take a long time for them to get their resources together and prepare their material. Now, it doesn’t take them any time at all, so we have to set requirements for library resources. They can use the library database, which is really just another mouse click, but we find they do a better job and have more reliable sources.”
The downside is that students don’t always process and retain material that is too easily obtained, she said, and the Internet also facilitates plagiarism, which has many pitfalls.
“People can tell when words aren’t yours,” Marlow said. “You suddenly can’t pronounce them properly, and it’s embarrassing when you copy material that talks about the thesis research you did in your early 30s when you are really a 19-year-old student. Situations like that are traumatic for them and for me.”
Marlow’s earlier research on women in prison was also traumatic for her as she found most of the women she studied were disempowered and didn’t have a say in their own lives. Many came from abusive or drug-dependent relationships and found themselves in prison for crimes which wouldn’t land men in jail.
“Sometimes, we say boys will be boys,” Marlow said. “If a woman is a mother and she breaks the law, she really gets the book thrown at her because the attitude is that since she is a mother, she should know better.”
What really drew Marlow’s interest, though, was that her own start in life was similar to many of the women she interviewed, who grew up with ill-equipped teenage parents or in neglectful situations.
“My parents luckily grew up, and I had many opportunities that may have been different had my young parents continued on their path together rather than separating so they could both grow up,” she said. “I found that in a different set of circumstances without an opportunity for education or support, I or some of my family members may have ended up in that same situation. I also believe that the women I interviewed opened up because I was not just passing through or looking down on their experience and that I understood where they were coming from.”
Marlow studied personal autobiographies of mothers and their attempts to maintain dignity and closeness with their daughters. Her study was attached to another study by Dr. Darlene Grant at the University of Texas on the relationship between mothers in prison and their daughters through a Girl Scouts program.
That study sought to find out if raising a mother’s self-esteem could, in turn, raise a daughter’s self-esteem, thereby cutting the vicious cycle of not standing up for themselves. Marlow focused on the development of personal narratives in a silenced or coercive environment.
“It was illuminating and very depressing,” she said. “They had regular Girl Scout meetings in Austin with the daughters of incarcerated moms and once a month, they would bring them to the women’s facility. It is one of the few programs where their goal is saving the moms to save the girls.”
“They work on self-esteem issues, lifestyle issues, not necessarily for the moms but for the daughters, so they might do something different,” Marlow said. “It was really moving and it will be a part of me forever.”
Interested in a career in Communication?
Meritorious Service
Hot summer temperatures in West Texas are nothing compared to those in Iraq.
Capt. Brad Roehrig, assistant professor of aerospace studies/ROTC, knows that all too well after spending the six hottest months of 2009 at Joint Base Balad northwest of Baghdad, where temperatures reached into the 120s.
“That was the most heat I’ve ever felt in my life,” Roehrig said. “When you walk out, it’s basically like stepping into an oven. When you get back to your office, you hang up your uniform and it takes about 10 minutes for your uniform to cool down. It’s hot!”
For what was his second tour in Iraq, Roehrig served as the J6 deputy director of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Basically, that means he had about 500-800 Special Forces troops depending on him and his team for all their communications in a variety of situations.
“Their main job was to advise the Iraqis,” Roehrig said. “We had to make sure the Iraqi communications worked. When our guys went out on missions with the Iraqis, we made sure all their radios worked, and there is a lot that goes into those radios to make them work. There were also the Predator video feeds that we had to keep working.”
His group was also charged with maintenance of the classified and non-classified communication networks at the base, plus accompanying Special Forces units on convoys. Though Roehrig was stationed at the largest base in the region and did not draw any combat missions this time around, safety for all the soldiers was still relative.
“We got shot at every once in awhile, but it’s pretty safe” Roehrig said. “Mortars and rockets, we got hit with those every couple of days. You always have it in the back of your mind that at any minute they could shoot at you. So, you are always on your toes a little bit.”
Shortly after his return to ASU, Roehrig was awarded the Bronze Star medal for meritorious service in Iraq. According to the brief accompanying his medal, “Capt. Roehrig distinguished himself by displaying initiative and serving with distinction as the J6 deputy director, providing critical communications support for three Special Operations Task Forces, eight Advanced Operating Bases and 46 Operational Detachments Alpha deployed across the Iraq Theater of Operations.”
A native of Sheboygan, Wis., Roehrig has been in the Air Force for 15 years. In addition to his two tours in Iraq, he has also had assignments to Germany, Korea, Arizona, Wyoming and Virginia. He came to ASU after serving two years as deputy commander of the 17th Communications Squadron at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo.
“I wanted to make a difference and do something positive with the cadets,” Roehrig said. “A motto I go by is ‘would I like working for that person?’ If I see characteristics or traits that I don’t like in cadets, I try to fix them to make sure that the best product enters the Air Force.”
With two years left on his ASU assignment, Roehrig is also using the time to go to school as he works toward his Ph.D. in computer information systems/security through North Central College in Arizona. For his next assignment, he is hoping for either the Pentagon or Special Forces Command.
Roehrig and his wife, Yuni, have been married for 12 years and have two children, Matthew, 10, and Gracie, 8. The whole family is happy that Roehrig is safely back at home.
“It was hard for them when I was gone, but they did pretty good” Roehrig said. “I was surprised how good they did, but Yuni kept them really busy. She is finishing her degree, so doing homework and watching the kids at the pool was no fun. Next summer is going to be much easier for her than last.”
