Nine Nominated for VA Outstanding Faculty Awards

Nine ODU faculty members were nominated for the TIAA-CREF Virginia Outstanding Faculty Awards for 2004, which is sponsored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and funded by TIAA-CREF. The program will select 11 professors for statewide awards of $4,000 each. The winners will be announced soon. ODU honored its nominees at a luncheon on Dec. 3 and established an account of $500 for each with the Office of Research to support their scholarship.

The following is an excerpt from the one College of Sciences nominees' personal statement, which was part of the nomination materials.

Cynthia M. Jones
Eminent Scholar
Biological Sciences

I grew up in an age and society that didn't encourage women to become explorers and scientists. …Even so, science fascinated me and I was forever doing some experiment on my own. As a freshman, I volunteered in my biology professor's lab and my whole world changed. I fell utterly in love with scientific research. My first real science was a project to understand why leaves fall. I was hooked. ... As one of the first women to enter the oceanography program at the University of Rhode Island, I was told by one of the school's leaders that I wasn't given any scholarship money, despite my academic excellence because they "didn't want to waste their money on a woman."

... My life experiences have taught me the importance of loving the thing you do. I believe that if I can instill this love of science in my students, that I will share one of life's greatest gifts.

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