PTC announces nominees for annual statewide awards program

Several Pine Technical College faculty members have been nominated by their students, faculty colleagues, peer staff members, administrators, alumni, and members of the Pine community for the prestigious Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees Educator of the Year Award for Excellence in Teaching program, which acknowledges exceptional individual professional accomplishment in providing instruction that prepares Minnesota’s college and university students for their professional, scholarly, and civic lives.

 

The recognition program, in its seventh year, is the result of the dedicated work of faculty, students, campus award committees, and a systemwide Teaching Award Review committee. Each year, members of campus communities nominate and select from among faculty whose excellence they wish to reward, and college and university presidents across the state designate campus nominees as Outstanding Educators to the Board of Trustees. Nominees from Pine Technical College for the 2013 round of awards include: Elayne Beehler, nursing instructor; Stacey Foster, English instructor; Pamela Munkberg, nursing instructor; and Julie Shores, accounting and business administration instructor. The next step in the awards program calls for PTC’s Award Review Committee to review nominees’ profiles and designate one Outstanding Educator from PTC for the systemwide Teaching Award Review Committee, who will vie for the Educator of the Year award to be named in April, 2013.

 

“I am so proud of all nominees on our campus,” says Joan Bloemendaal-Gruett, Pine Technical College Dean of Academic Affairs. “We have so much talent here, and this program gives us a mechanism for publicly recognizing our instructors’ skill, dedication, and expertise on a statewide stage,” Bloemendaal-Gruett adds.

 

Since 2007, the MnSCU Board of Trustees has recognized 172 Outstanding Educators, 23 of whom have received the Educator of the Year award. Last year, PTC’s Ann Boldt, instructor of developmental courses and English communications courses, received the Outstanding Educator award for PTC, and in 2011, PTC’s Melissa Felland, an instructor within PTC’s early childhood education program, was nominated for PTC’s Outstanding Educator award.