You might not know who received the President’s Award this quarter, unless you are a faculty staff member.
Who knows, but you probably don’t even care about the President’s Awards, until maybe now, when you read that the winner of the award may be your favorite professor
A new category in the awards relating to civic engagement may soon be open for nominations, De Anza College President Brian Murphy said.
The President’s Awards are given each quarter, with the exception of summer quarter, to two to three faculty or staff who have been at De Anza for more than ten years and has done exceptional work for the college.
"The idea for particularly recognizing, as one of the three [recipients] each quarter, persons who have given really deep services to the local community … is an effort on my part to highlight that element of the college’s mission," Murphy said.
People who serve the community outside of the college should be recognized because volunteering their time to help the homeless or educate others are within the goals of De Anza, he said.
"The reality is that it’s not separate from what it would mean to serve the college," Murphy said. "All of that work, though they [faculty and staff] might be volunteering their time, is really part of the mission of the college so I felt I that it would be important to honor that dimension of the college’s mission."
Civic engagement will be announced as a new category at graduation and will continue to be a category from then on. Three awards will be given each quarter with two of them for service to the college and the other for civic engagement, Murphy said.
"What I am going to do this first time is I’m going to do a sort of a blast e-mail, or message to the campus saying I’m establishing this new category and give a deadline for nominations," he said.
The awards for the fall and winter quarter are typically presented to the recipients at the faculty and staff holiday party in December. Winter quarter’s recipients are Rich Schroeder, physical education and personal training instructor, and Tom Izu, executive director of the California History Center and Foundation.
"It’s an honor to receive an award like that," Schroeder said.
Schroeder has been working at De Anza for 28 years.
"I really enjoy teaching ," he said. "I like working with students. I like to try to find ways to make students successful."
He felt even more special to be honored by the new president who has only been here for a short while, Schroeder said.
Murphy had visited Izu to tell him that he won the award and after Murphy left, Izu had to ask around to find out what the President’s Awards were.
"I just wasn’t paying much attention," Izu said. "I didn’t know what it was."
Izu has been working at De Anza for approximately ten years.
"I really appreciate being recognized by the president for the winter quarter President’s Award, but a lot of the things we’ve done here, I have to say, the credit really goes to the volunteers," Izu said.
Recipients of the winter quarter President’s Award received a clock with their names engraved into it.
Students who wish to nominate faculty and staff can send their nominations to Tina Woo, executive coordinator of the president’s office.
Nominations should be from a group of students or several classes of students and would be best if a dean also approved it, Woo said.
The President’s Award was started by A. Robert DeHart, former De Anza president, and his wife, Rena DeHart.
To learn more of the criteria and nominating a candidate for the awards send an e-mail to wootina@deanza.edu.