Facutly Awards

Donovan Fogt | Bruce Barnett | Belinda Flores | Alex Bowers | Carmen Fies | Kimberely Bilica | Marcela Oliva | Professor in ILT appointed to serve on the prestigious Caldecott Award Selection Committee | Board of Regents Recognizes ILT Faculty | Fiesta Babies Receives Multiple Awards | Faculty Collaborate on Bilingual Preparation Book

Donovan Fogt

Donovan Fogt received the UTSA Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award for the 2010 - 2011 academic year. Fogt, who was at the time, an assistant professor, has since been promoted to associate professor.

Bruce Barnett

Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, as well as Master Professor of the University Council for Educational Administration, have been named recipient of the UTSA Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award for the 2010 - 11 academic year.

Belinda Flores

DOE, “CCRAA, Support for STEM Teachers,” $2,615,000. DOE, “Middle Level ATEP,” $1,914,130. DOE, “Special Education ATEP,” $2,014,253. Greater TX Find., “Teacher Academy Induction Learning Community,” $506,499. GTF. “TAILC Continuation,” $150,000. THECB, “Academy for Culturally Efficacious Math and Science Teachers,” $700,00. UTCCERP, “Char. of Effective Math and Science Teachers,” $116,700.

Alex Bowers

Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, recently presented a paper, at the Association for Education Finance and Policy Annual Conference that examines predictors of passing school bond elections in Texas from 1997 - 2008. The paper was recently featured on Education Week’s blog State EdWatch, and will be published in the American Educational Research Association AERA Journal.

Carmen Fies

Brackenridge Foundation, “UTSA/ Basic Schools Network EC-5 STEM Initiative” amendment, $15,750. SALSI, “SPARKIT,” $49,922.

Kimberly Bilica

CCRI, “College Career Readiness Initiative,” $10,000. TRC, “Mid Career Recruitment for Math and Science,” $200,000.

Maricela Oliva

Maricela Oliva awarded the 2010-2011 Outstanding Organization Advisor by UTSA’s Student Government Association.

Professor in ILT appointed to serve on the prestigious Caldecott Award Selection Committee

Dr. Miriam Martinez, Professor in ILT, has recently been appointed to serve on the prestigious Caldecott Award Selection Committee 2013. The Association for the Library Service to Children, or ALSC, which is a division of the American Library Association, awards the Caldecott Medal annually to an artist who has produced the most distinguished American picture book for children. The committee is comprised of 15 members, of which eight are elected by the entire association, while the remaining 7 members, including the committee’s chairperson, are appointed by the ALSC’s president.

Of the appointment, Martinez states, “I am personally delighted and honored to serve on the Caldecott Award Selection Committee for 2013. Every year I always look forward to seeing which book is selected for the award. So I welcome the opportunity to be part of this important decision-making process. On a professional level, I think this will be an opportunity to strengthen ties among the various facets of my professional work—my teaching (which includes teaching a graduate class on picture books), my service to the Children’s Literature Assembly as co-editor of the Journal of Children’s Literature, and my research which focuses, in part, on picture books for children.”

Board of Regents Recognizes ILT Faculty

In August, Assistant Professor for the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Maria Kaylor and Senior Lecturer and area coordinator Alycia Maurer were among the 72 faculty members who were recognized by the Board of Regents for outstanding teaching. As a result, Kaylor and will share $2 million in awards. The educators were honored as the 2010 UT System’s Regents’ Outstanding Teacher Award winners during a ceremony on the UT Austin Campus.

The awards, which ranged from $15,000 to $30,000, were given faculty members who have exhibited extraordinary classroom performance and innovation at the undergraduate level. Award nominees must demonstrate a clear commitment to teaching and a sustained ability to deliver excellence in the classroom. In the competition for the awards, faculty candidates were subjected to rigorous examination of their performance over three years by campus and external examiners.

Fiesta Babies Receives Multiple Awards

Dr. Carmen Tafolla’s latest book, Fiesta Babies (2010, Tricycle Press, now Random House), has recently received multiple honors this past month as an ALA Notable Book, a Pura Belpre Honor Book, as well as listed on the CCBC as one ofthe “Best Books of 2010” (Cooperative Children’s Book Center, U of Wisconsin, Madison. The book is intended for children up to 4 years of age, and follows Tafolla’s 2009, What Can You Do With A Paleta? (2010, Tricycle Press, now Random House).

Faculty Collaborate on Bilingual Preparation Book

Professor of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Belinda Bustos Flores and Professor of Bicultural Bilingual Studies Ellen Clark collaborated together to produce their excellent scholarly contribution, Teacher Preparation for Bilingual Student Population: Educar para Transformar which addresses the growing number of bilingual students in public schools coupled with a critical shortage of teachers specially prepared to serve this population calls for a critical examination of policies and practices in bilingual and ESL teacher preparation. This volume focuses on understanding the structural, substantive, and contextual elements of preparation programs, and provides transformative guidelines for creating Educar signature programs.