UNO Alumni Association issues teaching awards to 9 faculty

The UNO Alumni Association marked the 13th year of its Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards program when it presented the honor to nine faculty members at the UNO Faculty Honors Convocation Breakfast Thursday, March 26.

Association President Lee Denker presented the awards, established in 1997 to honor distinguished teaching in the classroom. Peer committees in each college choose recipients, each of whom receives a $1,000 award. Denker presented recipients with commemorative tablets during the convocation breakfast in the Milo Bail Student Center.

With the 2009 awards the association has issued $113,000 in AOTAs since the program's start in 1997. Biographies of each recipient follow. Recipient June Mecham, a history professor, passed away March 1 after a long illness.

2009 UNO Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards

Nora Bacon, English, College of Arts & Sciences

Frank Bramlett, English, College of Arts & Sciences

Lyn M. Holley, gerontology, College of Public Affairs and Community Service

June L. Mecham, history, College of Arts & Sciences

Michael J. Messerole, health, physical education and recreation, College of Education

Massoum Moussavi, civil engineering, College of Engineering

Joanne Sowell, art and art history, College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media

Sandra L. Vlasnik, information systems and quantitative analysis, College of Information Science and Technology

David A. Volkman, finance, banking and law, College of Business Administration

Dr. Nora Bacon's teaching and scholarship are focused on writing and writing pedagogy. Administrator of the English Department's first-year writing program, she teaches composition courses, works with graduate students who are teaching for the first time, and supervises part-time faculty. She also coordinates the Writing Across the Curriculum Initiative, supporting faculty in all departments who use writing assignments to promote students' learning and to introduce them to the discourse practices of their disciplines. Her research interests include service learning, rhetorical variation across disciplines, and prose style. Bacon received her B.A. (1977) and M.A. (1985) in English from San Francisco State University and her Ph.D. in Language and Literacy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997. She has taught at UNO since 1997.

See her profile at http://www.unomaha.edu/english/bacon.php

Dr. Frank Bramlett is an associate professor of English who teaches linguistics courses that highlight the interaction between language and society, particularly social characteristics like race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. He contributes to several undergraduate and graduate programs at UNO, including English, black studies and women's studies, and he is a founding member of the Language Teaching graduate program (with faculty in foreign languages). He is associate director of women's studies and chair of UNO Safe Space and Ally Training, a curriculum and service committee that helps make the UNO campus a welcoming, safe environment for LGBTQI persons and their allies. Bramlett received his B.A. in English from Mississippi State University (1991), his M.A. in English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1993) and his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Georgia (1999). He joined UNO in 1999 as an assistant professor. See his profile at http://www.unomaha.edu/english/bramlett.php

Dr. Lyn M. Holley has been an assistant professor in the gerontology department since 2004. Her current research relates to civic engagement of elders, improving government performance in respect to services to elders and minority elders, and management of human resources in this context. Holley has published articles in several journals, including "The Gerontologist," "Educational Gerontology," "Public Performance Management Review" and "Communications of the Association of Information Systems." She also has provided chapters in "Leadership for America: Rebuilding Public Service" (2007), and the "Marcel Dekker Encyclopedia of Public Administration." Holley earned her B.A. from American University in 1964. She earned her M.P.A. from UNO in 1995 and her Ph.D. from UNO in 1999. After working in research at the Universities of Kansas and Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she joined the UNO faculty in 2004. See her profile at http://www.unomaha.edu/gero/holley.html

Dr. June Mecham was a scholar and teacher of medieval history, with special interests in women's history and monasticism in late medieval Germany. Mecham taught classes on the medieval church, medieval and renaissance witchcraft, medieval pilgrimage, and medieval female spirituality, among others. She passed away March 1 at the age of 35 after battling cancer. She had been an assistant professor in the history department since 2005. She was noted for her warmth, humor and whimsy, and for innovative assignments that taught students to explore the relationships between material culture and devotional practices, space and performance. Mecham earned her Ph.D. in history from Kansas University in 2004. She is survived by her husband, Gary Mecham, and daughter Evelyn. See her profile at http://www.unomaha.edu/history/faculty/mecham.html

Dr. Michael J. Messerole, is an associate professor the School of Health Physical Education and Recreation in the College of Education. His primary focus is physical education teacher preparation and adapted physical activity. Messerole teaches methods of teaching courses and adapted physical education at the undergraduate level and analysis of teaching at the graduate level. He also supervises student teachers. He has presented ideas on teaching physical education at state, regional and international conferences. Messerole uses experiential learning and service-learning projects to ensure pre-service teacher candidates have the knowledge and skills necessary to motivate and teach P-12 students to be physically active. Messerole earned his B.S. in physical education from the University of Northern Iowa, an M.S. in physical education-human performance/sports science from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and his Ph.D. in physical education-Pedagogy from the University of Northern Colorado in 2002. See his profile at http://coe.unomaha.edu/facstaff/mmesserole.php

Dr. Massoum Moussavi is an associate professor of civil engineering in the UNL College of Engineering administered on the UNO campus. He has 25 years of experience in teaching, research, and consulting in transportation engineering. Moussavi's research interests include transportation planning, design and economic analysis; mass transit systems planning and design; airport planning and design; traffic engineering; and multi-modal transportation systems engineering and analysis. He is a member of several national and international professional engineering organizations and scientific societies such as the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, Transportation Research Board, etc., and he is a registered professional engineer in Nebraska and Tennessee. Moussavi earned his B.S (1980) in civil engineering from the West Virginia Institute of Technology/West Virginia University, and his M.S. (1982) and Ph.D. (1984) in civil engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Moussavi joined UNO's faculty in 1987.

Dr. Joanne Sowell's primary focus is art history and art education pedagogy. She teaches art history courses in two special programs, the university Freshman Year Experience program, which provides courses focusing on college success for incoming freshmen, and CADRE II: the Arts Masters program which focuses on arts integration for new K-12 teachers. Sowell also works with the Center for Innovation in Arts Education, which collaborates on educational projects around the region and recently received the UNO Strategic Planning Award for Community Engagement. She received her B.A. in art and mathematics from Rhodes College in 1972, her M.A. in art history from the University of Michigan in 1974 and her Ph.D. in art history from Florida State University in 1985. She joined UNO as an assistant professor of art history in 1986. See more at http://www.unomaha.edu/fineart/art/sowell.htm

Sandra Vlasnik teaches a variety of courses for the College of IS&T with a primary focus in computer programming languages, programming concepts and database development and design. She has been closely involved in the development of courses for distance education and has taught several distance education courses. Her goals are to be student-centered and to engage students in the learning process. To reach this goal, she provides challenging assignments that directly utilize material presented in the lectures and textbook, provides in-class activities, requires students to reflect on their coursework and encourages student interaction in both the classroom and via Internet tools. She also uses a variety of delivery methods for the presentation of material in both the traditional classroom and distance education formats. Vlasnik served two stints as an adjunct faculty member at UNO before joining UNO full time as an instructor in 2005. She earned her B.S. in computer science from UNO in 1988.

Dr. David Volkman is the Col. Guy M. Cloud Professor of Investment Science and Portfolio Management and chair of the department of finance, banking and law in UNO's College of Business. He currently teaches portfolio management. Volkman served several years in the finance community, including posts with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Paine Webber and the National Bank of Commerce. He becomes the first UNO faculty member to receive a second UNO Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award, having previously received the AOTA in 1999. Volkman also has received the Executive MBA program's Distinguished Professor Award six times. His research focuses on mutual fund performance, capital budgeting methods, and agency conflicts. He has been published in several academic journals, including the "Journal of Financial Research" "Review of Financial Economics" and the "Journal of Economics and Finance." He has received the "Excellence in Research Citation" from ANBAR Management Intelligence Association. He was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2002 and currently directs the CFA review program for CFA candidates at UNO. He received his BS (1979) and Ph.D. (1992) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. See his profile at http://cba.unomaha.edu/dir_f/HomePageBio.cfm?id=57