April 20, 2001 ULM Outstanding Professors 2001 Honored by Alumni Association A week of special programs honoring faculty at the University of Louisiana at Monroe concluded with seven faculty members being recognized as Outstanding Professors by the ULM Alumni Association in ceremonies Friday night. This awards program, part of Faculty Honors Week held each year on the ULM campus recognizes faculty members for singular achievement in teaching, research and service. A winner from each of the University's seven Colleges is recognized by a distinguished alumnus who makes the presentation. Friday night's gala banquet was held at the Monroe Civic Center Conference Hall. Dr. Judy Fellows was recognized by the College of Allied Health and Rehabilitation Professions, the College of Business Administration recognized Dr. Jerry L. Wall, the College of Education and Human Research honored Dr. Glenda Rakes, Dr. Christopher A. Blackburn was honored by the College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Margaret R. Edwards was recognized from the College of Nursing, Dr. James Christopher Lynch won from the College of Pharmacy, and Dr. Michael A. Camille received honors for the College of Pure and Applied Sciences. Each honoree will be awarded a $1,500 cash award by the ULM Alumni Association along with the Outstanding Professor designation. An Associate Professor of Communicative Disorders and the Endowed Professor of Communicative Disorders, Fellows' work and innovations have led to the establishment of three new courses at ULM. She recognized a need for students to have increased opportunities to practice clinical transcription skills which led to the Phonetics Lab. Her course Clinical Counseling allowed Communicative Disorders majors to have a course specifically designed for them that addressed issues relevant to counseling persons in that field. Finally, she designed Seminar in the Profession is designed to help students prepare for the issues they will face as professionals. Over the past five years, Fellows has had 45 presentation proposals on the national, state, regional and local level. Her work on grant proposals has resulted in almost $300,000 in grant awards and she has served on numerous University, College, and community boards and committees. Wall, Director of the Center for Business and Economic Research, has been responsible for obtaining over $2 million in grant funds for ULM. His Louisiana Electronic Assistance Programs (LEAP) provides world-wide state of the art electronic access to a computerized database of business and economic information about Louisiana. Since 1984 Wall has published a quarterly publication, Metro Business Barometer, that summarizes economic activity in the Monroe area. He has served as a member of the Louisiana Data Base Commission since 1996 and has supervised the conducting of a wide variety of telephone surveys for the Louisiana Office of Public Health since 1990. An Associate Professor and Coordinator, Instructional Design and Technology, Rakes has garnered more than $300,000 in grant activity and her doctoral students dissertations won the Phi Delta Kappa regional outstanding dissertation award the last three years. She has established web sites for 10 courses at ULM as part of "Class Connections." Rakes has authored or co-authored 17 national and international publications. She currently serves as Editor of the National Forum of Applied Educational Research Journal and on the Editorial Review Board of the International Journal of Educational Technology. Her work has allowed ULM's College of Education and Human Development to incorporate technology, theory and practice into the curriculum. Blackburn, an Assistant Professor of History, was honored in 1999 for his work in ULM's Honors Program. The Fulbright Scholar has brought on-site cultural research into the classroom thanks to his extensive travels in Eastern Europe and his many publications. A member of the ULM faculty since 1996, Blackburn has earned grants and fellowships while at ULM from the ULM Faculty Development Program, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the American Council Learned Societies, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. This fall ULM will offer History 420: The Holocaust, for the first time, a direct result of Blackburn's work. Edwards, Professor of Nursing, has built many professional relationships outside the ULM campus. She recently established a partnership between ULM's Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International (honorary nursing fraternity) and a school of Nursing in Novgorod, Russia. Through this outreach Edwards and ULM have quietly made a major contribution to nursing education in Russia. Previously, Edwards has earned "Distinguished Lecturer" honors from Sigma Theta Tau and was named the Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the School of Nursing and the College of Pharmacy and Human Sciences at ULM. Her research includes four books, five journals and more than 15 presentations of papers. Through grant writing, she also helped secure more than $140,000 in extramural funding. Lynch, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice, has established a "real world" atmosphere for ULM Pharm. D. candidates with his experimental training site. Headquartered at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Lynch has established a diabetes clinic there that provides on-site training for ULM students. Interest from this clinic comes as far away as Thailand where a pharmacist currently is discussing with Dr. Lynch ways in which she might establish a similar diabetes clinic in her country. Publications and research for Lynch include authoring three research articles in the last three years and 15 presentations since 1997. He is a member of the Louisiana Diabetes Council Board of Directors and the State of Louisiana Diabetes Care Task Force. An Assistant Professor of Geosciences, Camille has traveled the world observing its geography and the people who inhabit it and has brought those experiences back to his ULM classrooms. He has brought geographic information systems (GIS) to campus, an immensely powerful computer mapping system that allows geographers, geologists, meteorologists and others to present, analyze and interpret spatial data and to solve complex spatial problems. Camille has focused his research on various topics related to the geography of Latin America while developing GIS as a secondary area of expertise. His experience with GIS maps assisted the Red Cross and Civil Defense departments in producing time zone maps to prepare for Y2K. He has also been of service to the Ouachita Police Jury and is currently producing the first digital spatial database of the ULM campus.