University of Albany's Van Orman Wins National Award

UAlbany doctoral student Kimberly Van Orman is one of 10 recipients nationwide of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award for 2008.

The award will give Van Orman an opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) Jan. 23-26 in Washington, D.C., where she will participate in a discussion panel about her work.

Orman is a Future Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Teaching, Learning & Academic Leadership (ITAL), working on the design and implementation of a Preparing Future Faculty program at Albany. She is currently completing her dissertation in the Department of Philosophy while spending 20 hours a week on the project.

The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education, and whose work reflects a strong emphasis on teaching and learning.

The awards are sponsored by K. Patricia Cross, David Gardner Professor of Higher Education, Emerita, at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1996 through 2005, the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards were administered by the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), where Cross had served as chair of AAHE's board of directors. The AACU became the partner association in 2006.

The award recipients were chosen in a highly competitive selection process out of approximately 150 nominees from universities across the country. The honorees "represent the finest in the new generation of faculty who will teach and lead higher education in the next decades," said AACU President Carol Geary Schneider.