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Pepperdine Faculty Honored With 2012 Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence

 

David Holmes and Linda Purrington

Pepperdine hosted its annual Howard A. White Awards for Teaching Excellence ceremony October 5, during the University Faculty Conference, awarding eight Pepperdine professors with the honor. The award, named in honor of Pepperdine's fifth president who served the University as teacher and administrator for almost 30 years, is given to full-time faculty members each year in recognition of their distinguished record of teaching excellence.

The awards are divided into two categories. Category one consists of full-time faculty members who have served at Pepperdine for more than six years or who are tenured. Their award includes a $3,000 stipend. The 2012 honorees in category one are Harry Caldwell, professor of law; Michael Gose, professor of humanities; David Holmes, director of African American studies and professor of English; Dennis Lowe, Young Family Life Chair; Linda Purrington, Graduate School of Education and Psychology lecturer; and Samual Seaman, professor of decision science.

Michael Gose, Scott Miller, and Harry Caldwell

Category two consists of full-time faculty who have served Pepperdine less than six years and who are not tenured. Their award includes a $2,000 stipend. The 2012 honorees in category two are Scott Miller, assistant professor of finance, and John Scully, practitioner faculty of accounting and finance.

"The Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence is the highest honor
offered by Pepperdine University for teaching," notes Jay Brewster, chair of the Howard A. White committee. "Students are at the very heart of all that we do at Pepperdine; we seek to do nothing less than transform lives. This teaching award is an annual celebration of our remarkable faculty, and a celebration of those who are doing exceptional things in the classroom. The process of selecting award recipients is guided by the voices of our alumni and our current students, who submit nomination letters for particular professors. We pray that faculty hear the encouraging voices of these students."

The Committee for Teaching Excellence coordinated the selection process. The members of the committee identified twenty finalists for the award based upon their review of the hundreds of nominations submitted by alumni, students, faculty, and staff. The recipients were selected after consideration of additional information submitted by and about each of the finalists.

During a career at Pepperdine that spanned almost 30 years, Howard A. White served as a history professor, a respected scholar, a gifted administrator, and a faithful steward of the University's mission. His life's work at Pepperdine as a teacher, scholar, and administrator exemplifies the commitment of the University and its faculty to students and to teaching and learning.