Four faculty members were honored during IUP's 2011 Honors Day on April 3, 2011, with the university's Distinguished Faculty Awards.
Since 1969, IUP has presented these awards to honor faculty members who make significant contributions to the university.
The 2011 winners:
- Lynne Alvine, English, Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching
- Barbara Blackledge, Theater and Dance, Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Arts
- Janet Goebel, English Department faculty member and director of the Robert E. Cook Honors College, Distinguished Faculty Award for Service
- John Sitton, Political Science, Distinguished Faculty Award for Research
Each year, students, administrators, and faculty and staff members are invited to nominate faculty members for these awards. The winners are determined by the University Senate Awards Committee and are announced during Honors Day. Award recipients also are recognized at the May Commencement ceremony.
Lynne Alvine
Alvine teaches and mentors both secondary English teacher candidates and in-service secondary English teachers. She regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English and English education and Liberal Studies English courses. She also serves as a mentor to English teaching associates.
As former director of the Southcentral Pennsylvania Writing Project, she worked closely with public and private schoolteachers across the grade levels and in various subject areas. For several summers, she has worked in the Oxford Summer Study Program, a three-week study-abroad collaboration, and in fall 2002, she became director of the program.
Alvine has served as secretary of the Executive Committee of the Conference on English Education, a subgroup of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is a former editor of the “Conversations from the Commissions” column for CEE's journal, English Education.
Barbara Blackledge
A professor in the Theater and Dance Department, Blackledge has been a professional actor since 1972 and has worked as a director for the past thirty-five years in both professional and educational theater venues. She has given many years of service to IUP, among them nearly a decade as chair of the Department of Theater and Dance. She is also one of the original faculty members at the Robert E. Cook Honors College, helping to develop the core curriculum still being taught there.
Blackledge was awarded the National Faculty Fellowship in Acting by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in 2007. She was the singular representative, originally nominated from eight regions of the country, chosen to receive this honor. In 2006, she received a scholarship to the Acting Teachers' Workshop, a three-week workshop for professional actors at the Actors Center in New York City. Dianne Wiest was among her workshop classmates, and Olympia Dukakis was one of the teachers. Blackledge was also a regional nominee in 2009 and 2010 for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival's National Teaching Faculty Award in Directing.
Among her recent performances was the Electric Theater Company's Kringle's Window, by nationally heralded playwright Mark Medoff. Because of this and other successes, Blackledge was invited in 2009 to join the Electric Theater Company while on sabbatical as a member of its resident company. The residency included her one-woman show playing Eppie Lederer, better known as Ann Landers, in The Lady with All the Answers and directing an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Diaries of Adam and Eve.
Janet Goebel
Goebel is the Cook Honors College's founding director and educator, with responsibility for interdisciplinary curriculum, marketing and recruitment of honors students including publications and website management, administering August orientations for new students, remodeling and managing an honors residential-academic facility, working with a major donor, maintaining relationships with honors alumni, fund-raising with alumni, and implementing a customized computer system for recruitment-to-alumni data.
In addition to her service, she acts as a mentor to students by aiding their applications for major scholarships and fellowships. She helps to place honors students in internships, promotes study abroad, and works extensively with seniors of various majors as they apply to graduate and professional schools. She also partners with the Indiana community to place students in meaningful volunteer experiences. She has served on the Provost's Academic Council, the International Advisory Board, and the Lively Arts Advisory Board.
John Sitton
Sitton came to IUP in 1987, was promoted to the rank of professor in 1996, and was named chair of the Political Science Department in 2008. In spite of his rank and responsibilities, Sitton has continued a full range of scholarly activity centering around Marxist theory and contemporary reinterpretations of Marx. His anthology, Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates, was published in 2010. Intended for the classroom, the book includes several short works by Marx, commentaries, and introductory material.
Sitton's book Habermas and Contemporary Society, originally published in 2003, was translated into Spanish in 2006 and was chosen for translation into Korean last year. This book reviews the political and social thought of a complex, contemporary social theorist.
Also in 2010, Sitton coauthored a paper, “Abrogation of the Social Contract? Blackwater and the Modern State” with IUP Political Science professor Dr. Mac Fiddner and spoke at the 2008 International Global Studies Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Sitton also participates in a variety scholarly mentoring activities, including serving as manuscript referee and writing book reviews for national and international journals.