The Metro State community is encouraged to come out in support of 10 of their colleagues who will receive Distinguished Service, Teaching Excellence and Golden Key Awards – and one who will receive a Special Recognition Award – at the Welcome Back Ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 7:30-9:30 a.m. in the King Center. Nearly 100 Length of Service honorees and newly named emeritus faculty will be recognized at the event as well.

The morning will begin with breakfast in the lobby, followed by the program at 8:30.

Special Recognition Award

Eugene Saxe served for many years as the faculty trustee to the Board of Trustees.

A Special Recognition Award will be presented to Eugene Saxe, Professor of English and 43-year Metro State veteran, for his years of service to the College as the faculty trustee on Metro State’s board for all but one year since the board’s inception through the 2008-09 academic year..

Distinguished Service Awards
President’s Award

Sandra Haynes will be lauded as an exemplary campus leader.

Sandra Haynes will receive the third-ever President’s Award, a category of the Distinguished Service Award established to acknowledge outstanding contributions and commitment to Metro State that are clearly above and beyond the norm.

Dean of the School of Professional Studies, Haynes is universally regarded as an exemplary campus leader. Her six years as dean have transformed the academic unit into a school of excellence. She has restructured departments in SPS to cut costs, reorganized departments to streamline processes, raised funds for the Accelerated Nursing Program, championed the program fee plan, and led the Teacher Quality Enhancement and Adventures of the American Mind grants.

Haynes also has spearheaded various initiatives, including developing a faculty retention committee focused on the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty, creating a series of colloquia to showcase faculty scholarship, and holding workshops to improve advising and teaching. Under her watch, several new degree programs have been developed after successful collaboration with others on campus. Haynes began her Metro State career in 1994 as an assistant professor of human services.

Faculty

Thomas Altherr teaches "the cultural connections that intertwine our existence to one another as global neighbors."

During his 30-year career at Metro State, Professor of History Thomas Altherr has taught 29 different courses and roughly 10,000 students. Altherr teaches his students “not just the facts and dates of history, but the cultural connections that intertwine our existence to one another as global neighbors,” says Assistant Professor of Journalism Kenn Bisio. He has written extensively on baseball history, including “Safe by a Mile,” a 529-page oral history book chronicling Charlie Metro’s baseball career as a player and coach, and editing “Sports in North America: A Documentary History,” a two-volume collection of information on pre-1820 sports in America. Altherr has at least a dozen research projects currently underway. His scholarly works have appeared in countless professional journals, including: American Indian Quarterly, The Melville Society Journal and the Journal of Sport History.

Administrator

Ben Zastrocky has helped implement almost every major computing system at the College.

Ben Zastrocky, director of the Educational Technology Center, has been instrumental in the development and implementation of a number of core College systems, including: MetroConnect, Banner self-service; http://www.mscdjobs.com/, Blackboard Vista, the College’s online course management system; SafeAssign, and the re-designed http://www.mscd.edu/ Web site. Additionally, he has been key in laying the technical framework for community outreach grants at Metro State, including: Teaching with Primary Sources, Urban Teacher Partnership, Center for Innovation and the Denver Public Schools Learning Academy. A 1995 graduate of Metro State, Zastrocky joined the College’s staff in 1997 and became director of the Educational Technology Center in 2006.

Classified Staff

Sadie Vigil is widely acknowledged as the go-to person for questions about Banner.

Sadie Vigil, Banner System manager in the Office of the Registrar, is widely considered the “go to” person for issues related to the Registrar’s Office, including student records, COF stipend disbursements, registration and grades. A 32-year employee of the College, Vigil has been with the office in its various incarnations, first as Admissions and Records and finally to a separate Office of the Registrar. Vigil’s leadership was instrumental to the successful launch of the Banner system 15 years ago, and she remains its foremost authority at the College today. She has chaired several subcommittees on Banner, sharing her expertise with colleagues across the College. She continues to play a critical role with each Banner upgrade, thoroughly testing the student module to ensure processes will continue to run smoothly.

Teaching Excellence Awards
Bill Baxendale, professor of biology, will receive the Tenured Teaching Excellence award. Baxendale works to bring biology, and specifically botany, to life, through a mix of live specimens and microscope slides that allow students to study “plant families they may not see on regular basis. Most of his courses involve at least one field trip so that students can observe plants in their natural habitats. Baxendale empowers his students to select research topics that bear a personal interest and then encourages them to present their scholarship using a variety of traditional and electronic mediums.

Rebecca Gorman, assistant professor of English, will receive the Tenure-Track Teaching Excellence award. Gorman’s teaching goes beyond the memorization of facts to a more inspired, relevant approach. Department of English Chair Cindy Carlson says Gorman’s students “rise to her constant level of enthusiasm and benefit from her deep expertise as both a working dramatist and a scholar.” Gorman cites professors with whom she studies as engendering her sense of “joy in passing on my knowledge to students.”

Wendy Gallagher, visiting assistant professor of modern languages, will receive the Full-Time Temporary Teaching Excellence Award. Gallagher, who teaches 1000- through 4000-level Spanish courses at Metro State, has a knack for making language learning fun and engaging. According to one student, she demonstrates “exceptional innovation, flexibility and commitment” in her courses. A member of the American Translators Association and an active freelance translator, Gallagher has been instrumental in designing, implementing and teaching the courses associated with the College’s Spanish Translation Certificate program.

Golden Key Honor Society Awards
Outstanding Full-Time Faculty
LaTra Tracy Rogers, assistant professor of social work, believes professors have a responsibility and a duty to stimulate and promote intellectual acumen inside and outside of the classroom environment. One student praised Rogers for “always striving to keep the focus on the students.”

The work of Kathy Clark, family support certification and minor coordinator for social work, in helping current victims and survivors of domestic violence illustrates her passion and commitment to the field of social work. Clark coordinates the Auraria Healthy Relationship Coalition’s annual on-campus screening project that identifies and intervenes in relationships plagued by domestic violence.

Outstanding Affiliate Faculty
Jennifer Gagliardi-Seeley, affiliate professor of biology, strives to “get the students to see that biology is all around us.” She involves students in research projects, ranging from a field study project on sunfish in the Denver metropolitan area to conducting a mate choice experiment on a Costa Rican fish species.