The Alumni Association will honor eight faculty and alumni at the annual Founders’ Day Award Dinner on Feb. 29 at the Arizona Biltmore.
The ceremony recognizes outstanding faculty and staff achievements dating back to 1964.
The award acknowledges the same devotion, hard work and dedication that ASU’s founders used in 1885.
Karen Bruhn, Wayne Frasch, Joe Lockard and Anna Wales are this year’s honorees for Faculty and Staff Achievement Awards.
Karen Bruhn
Bruhn, an Honors Faculty Fellow and principal lecturer at Barrett, the Honors College, has taught at ASU since 1998 and is being recognized with the Faculty Achievement Teaching Award.
Bruhn teaches classes on world religions, the history of Christianity, the relationships between literary and theological discourses in Europe and the Americas and, her favorite, The Human Event.
The Human Event is a yearlong reading and writing seminar for first-year honors students. She also teaches many upper-division classes and is involved in the Barrett Summer Study Abroad program, where she will direct a team in Greece and Italy in summer 2013.
“I really am honored and grateful that the Alumni Association recognizes and appreciates good teaching,” she said.
College is a very important time in a student’s life and she is happy to be involved and have an impact, Bruhn said.
She said she is honored by the award and believes the faculties at ASU and Barrett, the Honors College are “forward thinkers.”
Wayne Frasch
Frasch, a faculty member for more than 20 years and a professor in the School of Life Sciences within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will be honored for his work with cells, molecules and DNA with the Faculty Achievement Research Award.
Frasch’s research focuses on how molecular motors use energy to drive the rotation of protein complexes, or how an enzyme converts energy from light and food.
He has developed approaches to measure the rotation of a single molecule, in order to help understand how it works, Frasch said.
Frasch said he enjoys collaborating with students to test creative ideas and has been at ASU long enough to see his students advance in their careers.
“The real reward is in the accomplishments I’ve made scientifically and the gratification of seeing the people I work with move up and be successful,” he said.
Joe Lockard
Lockard, an associate professor of English within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has devoted the past two and a half years to the Prison English Project and will receive the Faculty Achievement Service Award.
The Prison English Project aims to expand education past prison gates.
The project has many factors, including an internship program for undergraduate students who act as online creative writing teachers for inmates at the Penitentiary of New Mexico. Graduate students teach in-person English classes to minimum-security prisoners at the state prison in Florence.
Lockard said he feels honored to be recognized.
“It expands the circle of support,” he said.
Anna Wales
Wales, the senior student engagement coordinator at the Polytechnic campus, is committed to the students, University and the Valley community and will receive the Staff Achievement Award.
Wales joined ASU in 1994 and said she loves contributing in any way to help students graduate and become successful.
She said she believes the Alumni Association is the “heartbeat of ASU.”
“I am super proud to be a Sun Devil,” Wales said. “I love our students and am so honored to be selected for this award.”
Others
Three alumni will also receive awards at the Founders’ Day Awards Dinner.
Randall McDaniel and Stephen Teglas will receive the Alumni Achievement Award, and Gary and Jeanne Herberger will receive the Philanthropists of the Year Award.
Reach the reporter at amhayne1@asu.edu
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