Dear Colleagues,

Not every week brings a major announcement or a new call to action. Sometimes our greatest achievements are found in the consistent value of our work and the relationships we build along the way. Across Academic Affairs, I continue to see faculty and staff helping students overcome challenges, supporting one another and advancing our mission through daily actions that may never appear in a report or presentation. Those efforts matter.

We’re still going through a period of remarkable change and growth, and I remain optimistic about what we can accomplish together. Thank you for your partnership, your commitment to excellence and your unwavering focus on student success. The strength of our academic community comes not only from what we achieve during extraordinary moments, but also from the care and dedication we demonstrate every day.

That isn’t to say there aren’t faculty and staff accomplishments that deserve to be highlighted! Keep reading for a sample.

• Erica Lewis, a professor in the School of Nursing, and Dr. Patrice Ludwig,interim assistant vice president for innovation & research in REDI, co-authored Leading Experiential Learning on Campus, published by Routledge. Written with six colleagues from institutions across North America, including former JMU colleagues Dr. Seán McCarthy, Dr. Nick Swayne and Dr. Tatjana Titareva, the book grew out of conversations begun when a JMU X-Labs team traveled to Michigan State University to consult on innovating in higher education. The book discusses an ambitious national research project centered on taking an ecosystem view of higher education experiential learning. Drawing on interviews with experts across the United States and Canada, the authors show how colleges and universities can build experiential learning as an interconnected ecosystem that supports student success across an institution. 
  
  
• Frequent readers of this column may remember Department of History associate professor Dr. Colleen Moore published her first monograph, The Peasants’ War: Russia’s Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy, almost one year ago. At the upcoming Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) conference, she will receive the Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, awarded for an author's first published monograph or scholarly synthesis that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia's past. Established in 1948, ASEEES is the leading international scholarly society dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
  
  
• Associate professor of Counseling and Supervision Dr. Viki Kelchner received the DiAnne Borders Clinical Supervision Award from the Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision. Named for an innovative and renowned clinical supervision and supervision scholar, the award honors a counseling supervisor or a supervision researcher who exemplifies excellence, innovation and impact in clinical supervision. The award is designed to acknowledge individuals who, through supervision practice or supervision research, demonstrate efforts toward extending and strengthening counseling services to recipients, establishing standards for service delivery systems, improving the quality of services delivered, developing and implementing in-service programs which improve counselor skills and knowledge, and/or developing and implementing assessment and evaluation of counselor competence and program implementation. 
  
  
• The Faculty Lounge Podcast website currently features two new episodes with the director of the Center for Economic Education and lecturer in Economics, John Kruggel, in which he discusses personal finance and the economics of college sports. You can access Episode 28: “Have your money work for you: Personal Finance with John Kruggel” and Episode 29: “The Economics of College Sports: Part two with John Kruggel” from the CFI website or most major podcast platforms.

We’re continuing conversations online about the role of Academic Affairs in the Madison Promise, and I hope you’ll take a look. And please keep sending notes of your achievements to provost@jmu.edu.

Sincerely,

Fletcher

Academic Affairs faculty and staff can email to contact the provost directly.

This is an open line of communication allowing faculty and staff to ask questions, but it is not a substitute from the crucial interactions they have with their academic unit head, department head and dean.

Students should contact AcademicQuestions@jmu.edu with questions.