FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Sue Stevens, Senior Media Relations Officer, 817-272-3317, sstevens@uta.edu

ARLINGTON - Four UT Arlington professors will be honored in September as recipients of the Alicia Wilkerson Smotherman Faculty Awards for their recent work with university students.

The Smotherman Faculty Awards, established in 2007 by Thad and Alicia Smotherman, recognize faculty within the College of Liberal Arts whose expertise and teaching abilities have inspired students to create work of exceptional merit. The awards were created to connect outstanding research and teaching and to showcase the achievements of university professors, said Dr. Beth Wright, dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

This year's honorees are: 

• Dr. Laurel Stvan, whose expertise in language production enabled her to guide a doctoral student's innovative work on second language acquisition. The research - an analysis of language learning in the Spanish immersion academy in Virginia - is slated to be presented to that state's Board of Education.
• Dr. John Garrigus, an expert in Caribbean history, who inspired sophomores in his History of World Civilization to construct an online Wiki site, encouraging students to learn through collaborative research. The site has since been opened to Texas history high school teachers and students.
• Dr. Stacy Alaimo, who challenged three graduate students to create an Ecology of Writing course that inspired UT Arlington freshmen to participate in a project to transform the Arlington landscape.
• Professor Darryl Lauster, an artist working in intermedia, who mentored a deaf student to create an installation referencing wind patterns in both visual and scientific terms.  The student's work earned her a graduate lectureship at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth for the fall 2009 semester.  She will attend classes in September and October and then present public lectures on selected works in the museum's collection. 

 Contact James Dunning at 817-272-0601 or jdunning@uta.edu for more information.

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