Faculty Focus
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.”
Interested in a career in the Air Force?
Clinical Expertise
With 27 years of experience in clinical practice, Harriet Lewis knows first-hand what students need to become professional physical therapists.
As the ASU Physical Therapy Department’s academic coordinator of clinical education, Lewis finds facilities where PT students get their hands-on training and prepares them for the experience. She has secured more than 100 clinical contracts with health care facilities throughout the U.S., where ASU physical therapy students now have the option of doing their clinical rotations. Several of the contracted facilities are on the U.S. News and World Report list of best hospitals, including Mayo Clinic, Texas Children’s Hospital and Methodist Hospital in Houston, and the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J.
“I make sure that the sites are appropriate for our students,” Lewis said, “and that the sites have all the information they need in order to mentor our students well. I also make sure the students are ready to go, including having all their records in place and having passed all their classes. I also prepare them for those aspects of work in the clinic that are not directly related to patient care.”
That type of support for students led the ASU Alumni Association to name Lewis the first-ever Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award winner from the new College of Nursing and Allied Health in the fall of 2009.
But, it is not all about just helping the students. Lewis also prepares the professional therapists who oversee the students in their clinical rotations. In that capacity, she was appointed to the American Physical Therapy Association’s (APTA) Clinical Instruction Education Board (CIEB) for a three-year term in July of 2009.
The CIEB oversees the APTA Clinical Instructor Education and Credentialing Program (CIECP) and the advanced version of the program. Lewis is a credentialed clinical trainer for both programs, one of only two in Texas for the regular CIECP and the only one in the state for the advanced program. There are only 49 credentialed trainers for the advanced program in the entire U.S.
On top of all that, Lewis is also an assistant clinical professor in the ASU Physical Therapy Department, where she teaches classes in documentation, clinical practice and practical skills.
“I enjoy interacting with the students and finding ways to engage them in different topics,” Lewis said. “But, in our new doctoral program, I will have fewer responsibilities in classroom teaching, though I will still teach my Introduction to Clinical Practice course and the documentation.”
Prior to her 10 years on the ASU faculty, Lewis spent nearly three decades as a licensed physical therapist in a variety of settings, including acute care, outpatient orthopedic physical therapy, nursing home, long-term acute care and home health. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Baylor University and a certificate in physical therapy from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. She received her Master of Science degree in exercise and sports science with a minor in industrial engineering from Texas Tech University.
Lewis’ husband, Preston, is director of the ASU Office of Communications and Marketing. Their son Scott Lewis, daughter-in-law Celeste and granddaughter Hannah live in Anchorage. Their daughter Melissa Kemp, son-in-law John and granddaughter Cora reside in Round Rock.
Interested in a career in Physical Therapy?
Exercising Options
Although she didn’t plan on teaching adaptive physical education when she took a Kinesiology teaching position at ASU, Dr. Kathleen Price says her career has worked out for the best.
The 2009 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award winner from the College of Education finds that path rewarding after a career that began with a volleyball scholarship to Baylor University and continued at several public schools as a teacher and coach before she made her way to ASU.
“After I graduated from Baylor, they offered me an opportunity to stay and do my master’s,” Price said. “I finished my master’s in a year and worked with the volleyball team as a graduate assistant.”
She taught health and physical education in several different high schools before realizing that she needed a different direction in her life.
“In the back of my mind,” Price said, “I didn’t see myself doing that when I was 40. I went back to school at Texas Woman’s University, which is noted for its adaptive physical education. I was more interested in sports sciences – exercise science, biomechanics and exercise physiology.”
Price came to ASU’s Kinesiology Department while she was still working on her doctoral dissertation at TWU. Here, she found another route stretching out before her.
“When I first got here, Melanie Croy was department head and told me I needed to teach adaptive physical education” she said. “I had never taken a class in adaptive, but I hung around other graduate students who were doing that, so I had a pretty good idea about it.”
“I was also familiar with adaptive because my grandfather had his leg amputated when I was seven years old due to circulatory problems. I learned at an early age that life goes on and that a disability wasn’t something that had to stop you from living. My grandfather continued to drive, fish, and live life to the fullest.”
“It’s been neat for me,” Price said, “because I have been able to look at the exercise physiology and biomechanics side of why a person with cerebral palsy walks that way or looking at muscular dystrophy or mental retardation characteristics and what implication they have in terms of exercise or mechanics of walking.”
Price also teaches physical education for elementary school. She said students study age and developmentally appropriate activities along with classroom management techniques.
“I encourage my physical education students to make interdisciplinary connections, such as reinforcing math, science or language arts concepts while teaching physical education,” Price said. “If we scratch the classroom teachers’ backs, they may do that for us.”
Outside the classroom, Price plays golf for recreation and walked a lot until she injured her Achilles tendons.
“I would walk in a neighborhood park, maybe 35 miles a week,” she said. “In 2007, I had MRIs done and both tendons were torn. It was a combination of walking on pavement and the amount I was doing.”
Price still walks some when she plays golf but not on a paved cart path.
Two sports she can’t participate in are curling and speed skating, which were popular in her native Wisconsin but not so much in West Texas.
“I’ve never had a chance to play curling,” said Price, who has one of the sport’s 44-pound oval-shaped and polished concrete stones in her office. “It’s interested me in the last eight or nine years. It’s getting more publicity and requires a lot of balance and teamwork.”
“There probably aren’t too many people in San Angelo with a curling stone,” Price said. “When it was delivered, the poor guy from UPS pulled up with this box. I thought it was going to be a great doorstop.”
She said she sees the stone as much more than that, however.
“The whole idea behind curling is a lot like life,” Price said. “You look at the slippery destination toward a goal. Sometimes there are obstacles you have to overcome and sometimes you need your buddies to help you through.”
