By Jack Armstrong News Editor
Western has announced the 2015 winners of the Pastega awards. Dr. Kevin Walczyk has been selected for the Excellence in Scholarship award and Dr. Maureen Dolan has been selected for the Excellence in Teaching award.
The Pastega awards are an annual honor given to two professors selected by students, faculty and the administration. According to Western’s website, the awards were created by “noted Oregon philanthropist Mario Pastega.”
Pastega donated to Western annually and part of that money was used to recognize educators who strove to push the students and the university to higher levels of excellence. The first recipients of the awards were honored in 1985, and it has been an annual ceremony since.
According to the Pastega Award website, the Pastega family made a $40,000 donation that was matched by the Oregon University System in 1997 to maintain the awards well into the future.
The Excellence in Teaching award is given to a professor who “engages, inspires and educates students to the greatest possible learning.”
The Excellence in Scholarship award is given to a professor who maintains “significant and enduring scholarly or creative achievement,” alongside their professorial duties. This can include ongoing research or publishing articles.
The decision on which professors will be honored is handled by the Pastega committee.
Chair of the committee Tom Bergeron said, “the work of choosing is done by the recipients from the two previous years,” in addition to a member of student government, and President Mark Weiss.
Last year’s winners were professor of history David Doellinger, awarded for Excellence in Scholarship, and the director of the writing center, professor of English Katherine Schmidt, was awarded for Excellence in Teaching.
The award is accompanied by a $1,000 honorarium.
Dr. Kevin Walczyk: Professor of Music
Dr. Kevin Walczyk grew up in a musically diverse family, and as a result he was exposed to an array of musical knowledge and styles from an early age.
This knowledge and exposure soon turned into a passion and he continued his musical pursuits throughout his time in college at Pacific Lutheran University and University of North Texas.
While attending university, Walczyk shifted his interests from playing and enjoying music to composition. Walczyk said that composition seemed “unexplored and invigorating.”
Upon his graduation, Walczyk looked for a way to translate and convey his passion for composition to the younger generation, which pushed him to move into teaching.
As a first generation college graduate for his family, Dr. Walczyk said he chose to teach at Western in 1995 largely because of its reputation for excellence in serving first generation college attendees such as himself.
He also said he expressed interest in helping to build Western’s fledgling music program, and as a result he was given the opportunity to help orchestrate program development. The chance to involve himself in the new program featuring modern music composition and jazz techniques was both challenging and intriguing.
Walczyk said, “I am not only training future musicians, I am training future teachers, future mentors, and future role models of our society who will pass on their passion to future generations.”
Speaking about the award itself Walczyk said “this is a very humbling honor, particularly when one considers the number of outstanding faculty on the WOU campus.”
Dr. Maureen Dolan: Professor of Sociology
Earning a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1993, Dr. Dolan specializes in Latin American studies, class analysis, state theory, and gender studies.
Having graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Maureen made her way to Western in the same year, and she began teaching a wide range of classes under her umbrella of specialties.
Many of these attribute back to her interest in Latin America, which stems from a study abroad opportunity in Chile taken during her own years as a student.
Being taught by exiled Brazilian scholars was just the start of an in-depth trip in the South American country. While there, Dr. Dolan immersed herself in the local customs and agriculture, collaborating with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Agriculture in regards to agrarian development.
In this case, agrarian development is a set of factors, including technological and economical, that may have an effect on agricultural practices.
In relation to the entire trip, Dolan said “it was important in my formation of an understanding of sociology as a discipline that is critical, public, and engaged in the practice of social justice.”
Today, Dr. Dolan lives in Salem with her family following the creation of a service-learning course known as the Latino Mentor Program in 1996. Through educational and community outreach like the mentor program, Latinos are helping areas in Oregon that are underserved.
This community movement can involve tutoring programs in schools locally, and now even internationally since the program has spread to Mexico, Nicaragua and Argentina. The groups working with the international segment of the program focus on incarcerated youth and even the LGBTQ community.
“It is also a great honor to work with WOU students who bring their energy and insight to the Latino Mentor Program,” Dolan said. “In the development and expansion of the program, I have listened to my students and followed their lead in identifying our involvement in community projects.”
Dolan said she considers the Pastega Award “a great honor to be recognized by the WOU community for developing a curriculum that links teaching, research and service in the Latino Mentor Program.”
