1998-1999 AWARD RECIPIENTS
John Szarlan
Mr. John Szarlan, Counselor in the University's Department of Counseling Services, was a recipient of the Outstanding First Year Experience Teacher Award in 1998-1999. Mr. Szarlan demonstrated competence, commitment, and advocacy for first-year students long before his career at the University of Connecticut. In the early 1970s, before attention to the first-year experience became popular in higher education, Mr. Szarlan developed a program to facilitate academic and social adjustment at Leicester Junior College in Massachusetts. He was instrumental in helping form the First Year Experience program here at the University of Connecticut upon his arriving in Storrs.
Beginning with the program's inception in 1996, Mr. Szarlan continuously drew upon his 20-plus years of experience in the areas of career education, study skills, learning styles, type theory and the like to teach FYE students and train FYE instructors. Each year, Szarlan volunteered to teach several FYE sections and was invited to dozens of others as a guest speaker. Mr. Szarlan's hard work and dedication to the FYE Program was worthy of a nomination nationally in 1998 as an "Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate" for the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.
Mr. John Szarlan passed away in May 2007. The First Year Experience Awards have been renamed in his memory. Please click here to read more.
Dr. Suman Singha
Dr. Suman Singha, Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and currently the Vice-Provost for Academic Administration at the University of Connecticut, was a recipient of the Outstanding First Year Experience Teacher Award in 1998-1999.
Always a dedicated instructor of FYE, Dr. Singha has been actively involved in the First Year Experience program since its beginnings. He has been instrumental in generating involvement in first-year activities within his division. He has also been a leader in stimulating lively discussion in the classroom and has been working with Dr. John Riesen, the 2000-2001 Outstanding First Year Experience Teacher Award recipient, on a book of case studies entitled “Case Studies for the FYE.” |
