The Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award (OAFA) Committee is pleased to share with you the three outstanding adjunct who have won our "quarterly" awards. Now is YOUR time to decide who will be awarded our annual award of $750 from Pearson Publishing to put toward their own professional development. To see their statements about how they would spend their money and to vote, go online here: [linlk https://nagt.org/nagt/divisions/2yc/oafa_voting.html] (note that you must be logged into your serc account in order to vote).

If you want to learn more about the individual great work they're doing, each of their profiles (and previous years winners) are posted here: The deadline to vote is 12/20, so finish your classes, submit those grades and celebrate some outstanding adjunct faculty by voting for our annual awardee!

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Bridget James at the Grand Canyon

The OAFA Committee is excited to recognize Bridget James of De Anza College as our Fall 2019 Honoree. Bridget teaches a variety of Meteorology, Oceanography, and Geology courses at multiple colleges in the San Francisco/San Jose area. Despite that busy schedule that any "part-time" instructor understands, she has also maintained an active leadership role in the geoscience community. She is one of the Northern California Change agents for the national SAGE 2YC Project and has been co-leader of an Earth Science Educators Rendezvous workshop on online instruction, plus she just found out she is the newly elected Webmaster for the NAGT 2YC division (whew!). According to Christopher DiLeonardo, who nominated her for the award, she also contributes on a local level as "a leader in developing networks amongst 2YC geoscience departments and with 4-year universities in the San Francisco Bay Region".

Bridget was the first in her family to complete a college degree, she completed her B.S. at the University of California Santa Cruz Campus, and earned her M.S. in geology at San Jose University while working with the Bay Area Earth Science Institute, supporting K-12 earth science education.

In his nomination, DiLeonardo writes, "I can without exception think of no one more deserving of this award. Bridget has demonstrated her skills as a classroom and online educator in numerous subjects across the introductory earth sciences curriculum. ... Bridget has been a tireless supporter of her full-time faculty colleagues, helping with the development of several online classes. And finally, as a role model to her students, especially those considering careers in the earth sciences she has been nothing short of spectacular. Bridget James is very deserving of this award and recognition by her faculty colleagues in NAGT."

Bridget, we are inspired by your energy and grateful for your service to the Geo2YC Division and your students! We are pleased to support Bridget with a one-year complimentary membership to the NAGT Geo2YC Division, and she will be entered into the pool of honorees under consideration for the Annual Outstanding Faculty Award, which is sponsored by a professional development stipend of up to $750 from Pearson Publishing.

To our readership—tell us about yourself or your adjunct colleagues! What wonderful ideas and strategies are you bringing to your corners of the geoscience world? Please complete an Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award nomination today:

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Mariah Tilman in the field - Alaska

I just want to give a huge thank you to Pearson and all of you in the NAGT Geo2YC community who supported me in earning this adjunct award. When money is tight, funding for supplies always suffers, but you gave my students inside the opportunity to work with new high quality rock and samples that we could not otherwise afford. Before our samples were limited and falling apart from years of use, with the grant provided by Pearson, I was able to buy higher quality, and more complete sets of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks for the students to use for their identifications labs.

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Rocks purchased with funds from the 2018 OAFA award.

Provenance: Mariah Tillman
Reuse: This item is in the public domain and maybe reused freely without restriction.

Unfortunately, due to constraints of the College Inside Program (providing higher education opportunities for incarcerated adults), I can't share a photo of the students working with the new samples, but they did want me to forward a big thank you to all of you on their behalf. By shopping at a smaller shop, picking and choosing the best samples and sizes for each rock type, as well as putting the kits together myself, I was able to use that money to make 6 complete rock kits for each facility with some spares leftover so these kits will be usable for years to come. I was also able to pick up some larger samples of unique, yet important geologic specimens like Banded Iron Formation from the Precambrian which will be used in all my classes, inside and out. Thank you again for all of your support and don't forget to vote on the next round of awardees, all of who are exceptional instructors who work hard everyday to support and inspire their students.