Wake Forest Magazine December 2002 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

Ettin, Harriger honored
Waddill awards also presented
at Convocation.
Professor of English Andrew V. Ettin
and Professor of Political Science Katy
Harriger were among those honored during
the University’s Opening Convocation in
October. Genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter,
a leader in the race to decode the human
genome, was the keynote speaker during
the program, which kicked off the School
of Medicine’s Centennial Celebration.
Ettin, who joined the faculty in 1977,
received the Donald O. Schoonmaker
Award for Community Service. He has participated
in social and religious activities as
a board member of the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, as the spiritual
leader of Temple Israel in Salisbury, N.C.,
as the acting rabbi at Temple Emmanuel in
Winston-Salem and as the Jewish chaplain
at the Blumenthal Home for the Aged.
Harriger, who joined the faculty in
1985, received the Jon Reinhardt Award
for Excellence in Teaching. The former students
who nominated Harriger praised her
for spending a great deal of time advising
and working with students, especially on
their writing.
The Marcellus Waddill Excellence
in Teaching Awards were also presented.
Jackie Rogers (’98), who received the award
on the elementary level, is a fifth grade
teacher at P.S. 38 in East Harlem, N.Y.
C a m p u s C h r o n i c l e
President Hearn, Jonathan Milner; Hearn and Jackie Rogers; Dean Paul Escott and Professor Katy Harriger
Jonathan Milner (’90), the secondary
winner, teaches AP politics and European
history at the Career Center in Winston-
Salem.
Rogers and Milner were chosen from
among 59 nominees for the award by a
selection committee chaired by Associate
Provost Sam Gladding (’67, MAEd ’71).
The Waddill Award is presented annually
by the Office of Alumni Activities and the
education department. Each winner receives
a $20,000 cash award, one of the largest
monetary prizes of any teacher award program
in the country.
Rogers, a native of Maryland, wanted to
teach underprivileged children after she
graduated from Wake Forest, so she ended
up at P.S. 38, which draws most of its students
from surrounding housing projects
and homeless shelters. The school had been
under state review for failing to meet basic
standards for 12 years, longer than any other
elementary school in the state, but she and
other teachers succeeded in raising test
scores and getting the state review lifted.
“I try to teach my class the way that I
was taught,” she said, “not to dwell on the
terrible circumstances surrounding my students’
lives, but to treat them as children
who have minds waiting to be filled with
exciting information.”
Milner taught at schools in Texas and
Virginia before returning to Winston-Salem
four years ago. He is the son of two educators–his
father, Joe, is chairman of Wake
Forest’s education department, and his
mother, Lucy, teaches in the education
department at Salem College. He and his
students started an exchange program several
years ago that has brought several students
from Bosnia to the Career Center. He
has gone from teaching some of the poorest
students in Texas to more affluent ones in
Winston-Salem, but he said both experiences
have taught him the importance of
communicating hope for the future to
young people. “I’ve also learned that my
most successful lessons are student-centered,
dominated by student discussion and
interaction and questions.”
The Waddill Award was established in
1994 by David Waddill of Rye, N.Y., to
honor his father, Professor Emeritus of
Mathematics Marcellus Waddill. The
deadline for the 2003 awards is Dec. 16.
For information, visit
www.wfu.edu/alumni/events/waddill.
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