Teresa Wells, Language Arts instructor at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s Jefferson Davis Campus, has been selected as a Phi Theta Kappa Faculty Scholar. Faculty Scholars serve as seminar leaders at Phi Theta Kappa’s Annual Honors Institute that will be held at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque during June 2015.
Faculty Scholars will participate in the two-part Faculty Scholar Conference at Phi Theta Kappa’s Center for Excellence in Jackson in January to prepare for their leadership role during the summer institute.
Wells, who has been a Phi Theta Kappa adviser since May 2007, was one of only 28 Phi Theta Kappa chapter advisers selected from nearly 3,000 of their peers to serve as 2015 Faculty Scholars. During Honors Institute, the Faculty Scholars will lead groups of 15 to 20 honor students in seminar discussions of the issues presented by experts on the Honors Study Topic throughout the week. A second Faculty Scholar Conference will be held in the days leading up to Honors Institute.
Wells has been a full-time instructor at MGCCC since 2005 and teaches Honors and Language Arts classes at the freshman and sophomore levels.
Shelly Ford, the college’s Comptroller, was selected as the 2014 Outstanding Business Officer Award by the Community College Business Officers (CCBO) association. Ford, who has worked at MGCCC for two and a half years, is an MGCCC alumna and a former Alumni Hall of Fame recipient (2011).
CCBO provides educational and professional support, networking opportunities, and timely trend and demographic information for business officers representing community colleges and community college system offices in the US and in Canada. CCBO recognizes that excellence in the profession sets the standard for the future and strives to acknowledge those professionals who have excelled in the field. To that end, the Outstanding Business Officer Award is given annually to those individuals with distinguished service to their institution and community. Award winners are nominated and chosen by their peers.
Lisa Courtney, Career-Tech Department chair at the Perkinston Campus and Business and Office Technology instructor, was named the 2014 Outstanding Career and Technical Business Educator by the Mississippi Business Education Association in September. The MBEA is a professional organization of business educators that began in 1950. It is affiliated with the Southern Business Education Association and the National Business Education Association.
Courtney has worked at the college since 1977, when she began working part-time in the summer as a secretary typing the Perkinston Campus Self Study for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). She began working in a full-time capacity at the college in 1985. She will retire this year.
Dr. Gaye Winter, Language Arts instructor at the Perkinston Campus, was chosen as the Mississippi State Representative (3 year term, 2014 – 2017), for the Two Year College Association (TYCA) Southeast Chapter. TYCA is affiliated with the National Council Teachers of English (NCTE) and TYCA National.
The Southeast Chapter of TYCA consists of the following states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The mission and goals of the Two Year College Association include defining and exploring issues relevant to the improvement of the teaching of English in all community colleges in the region and encouraging studies and research in the teaching of English in the two-year college.
Mississippi will host the 50th Anniversary Conference of TYCA in Jackson this spring:
“TYCA-SE: 50 Years of Teaching Ourselves into History”
February 19 -21, 2015, Jackson Hilton, Jackson, MS
For additional information: http://www.tycasoutheast.org.
Lynn Deegen, director of Purchasing and Property Control at MGCCC, and Sam Lemonis, president of MAGPPA, at the group’s annual conference held on October 19-22 in Tupelo.
Lynn Deegen, director of Purchasing and Property Control at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, received the Oren Segret Award at the Mississippi Association of Governmental Purchasing and Property Agents (MAGPPA) conference held in Tupelo on October 19-22. The award is given annually to one member for his or her outstanding leadership in purchasing and procurement.
Deegen, who has worked at MGCCC since January 2008, said the award was a pleasant surprise. “I did not know I was receiving the award, so was surprised, but also very honored because it came from my peers, people who know what it takes to do the complex jobs that we do in purchasing, procurement and property control.”
MAGPPA is a professional organization dedicated to promoting and maintaining high ethical values, enhancing public purchasing practices, protecting the public trust and making a positive difference by leading the way through excellence. It provides members with educational opportunities and certifications in a collaborative learning environment that encourages professional growth.