JoBeth Mullens to Receive Distinguished Teacher Award
Keene, N.H. 8/24/06 - Dr. JoBeth Mullens, professor and chair of the Geography Department, will receive the 2006 Distinguished Teacher Award from the Keene State College Alumni Association.
The Distinguished Teacher Award is based on four criteria: excellence in the classroom, encouragement of independent thinking, rapport with students both in and out of the classroom, and effective student advising. She will receive this award at Fall Honors Convocation in October.
Colleagues and students who nominated her describe a dedicated teacher and researcher able to integrate real-world experiences into her courses. “Her classroom lectures tend to be voyages of self-discovery and insight for her students,” her colleagues wrote in their nominating letter. “In the broadest sense her mission as a professional academic geographer is to transmit geographic knowledge to students.”
Dr. Mullens joined KSC in 1995 after serving as a faculty research assistant and instructor at Oregon State University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in science at the University of Central Arkansas, a Master’s of Science at Southern Illinois University, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Geosciences from Oregon State University. In 2002 she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. She helped to create and has co-led two study-abroad courses for KSC students in the Czech Republic.
Dr. Mullens’s research interests are water resource planning and management, river restoration, dam removal, management of interstate and international waters, and water resources institutional arrangements.
Among the courses she teaches are Water Resources Geography, Soils and Vegetations, Environmental Assessment and Monitoring, and Environmental Literacy and Community Action. In addition to serving as chair of the geography department, she also advises the KSC Campus Ecology Club.
Dr. Mullens has served on the KSC Science Curriculum and the Sabbatical committees, and represented Putney, Vermont, on the Connecticut River Joint Commissions Local Advisory Council. She organized the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society Annual Meeting conference held on campus last fall, and the Ashuelot River Symposium, held on campus in June of 1998.
