Georgia Southern University honors two outstanding faculty members in College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

August 13, 2008

At its first meeting of the academic year, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) at Georgia Southern University honored two outstanding faculty members.

Professor Janice H. Kennedy received the Ruffin Cup, named for and endowed by the late Professor David A. Ruffin, a professor at Georgia Southern from 1962 to 1981. Last year’s Ruffin Cup winner, Professor Gary Dartt, presented the award to Kennedy.

Interim CLASS Dean Sue Moore presented the CLASS Award for Excellence to Sonya Huber, assistant professor of creative writing. Both honorees are residents of Statesboro.

The Ruffin Cup is presented annually to a CLASS faculty member who has given distinguished service to the University for at least 10 years and who excels in teaching and service to the students, in scholarship, and in contributions to the spirit of the liberal arts. The award includes funds to enhance teaching and scholarship for the recipient through travel or purchase of new teaching materials.

Ruffin Cup recipient Janice Kennedy, a professor of psychology, has been a faculty member of the University since 1984. In addition to teaching developmental psychology courses from childhood to aging, she has chaired nine master’s thesis committees and served on 14 others. Kennedy taught four summers as part of the USG London program. She has authored more than 20 publications and given more than 50 presentations in her discipline. She serves as chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee for the Department of Psychology, and she is a member of both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.

CLASS Award for Excellence recipient Sonya Huber is the author of many publications, including the recent ‘Opa Nobody,” a family memoir based on extensive research and documentation. Her book tells the story of her grandfather, Heina Buschman, and offers a rare look into the heart of the ‘average” socialist trying to survive the Nazis and rebuild a broken world. In addition to teaching composition, creative writing, and creative nonfiction, Huber serves on the University Women’s and Gender Studies Committee, the Writing and Linguistics Technology Committee, and the Writing and Linguistics Creative Writing Area Committee. Her courses include the innovative use of blogging, podcasting, and other multimodal approaches, and she received a faculty development award to develop a podcasting station to integrate use of audio into composition and creative writing courses. Huber won the 2007 Coastal Business, Technology, and Education Alliance (CBETA) Excellence in Education Award in 2007.

The CLASS Award for Excellence is presented to faculty members in their first ten years of college-level teaching who are outstanding in a wide range of activities, including teaching, scholarship or creative activity, service, and advisement.

More information about the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Georgia Southern University is available at http://class.georgiasouthern.edu.