The College of Arts
and Sciences is pleased to announce the winners of the 2007 Staff Awards, which
recognize staff members for outstanding service to their department and to the
university community. April Lawhorn, academic specialist for the Honors
Program, has won the Senior Staff Leadership Award. Genevieve Edwards, program
manager for the Bio-Bus program, has won the Outstanding Junior Staff Award.
Lawhorn has worked in the Arts
and Sciences Honors Program for the last seven-and-a-half years, under three
different directors.
“She’s been the one constant
presence in the growth, development and success of the program,” said Robert
Sattlemeyer, the current director. “She provides the human touch that makes the
Honors Program like being at a small, selective college within the University.”
Lawhorn interviews students
before they even arrive on campus, and advises them from the time they choose
their first classes up until graduation. She keeps her door open at all times,
and knows every honors student by name.
“She pushes us every day to work
harder than we did before,” said Honors student Kathryn Hudson. “She truly
believes in the ability and potential of all of the honors student.
Lawhorn, who said she is honored
to be recognized, believes the best part of her job is watching the honors
students mature and grow during their time at Georgia State.
“I love when they graduate,” she
said, “but it’s kind of melancholy – like I have 500 kids I have to graduate
and move on.”
Genevieve Edwards deals not only
with Georgia State
students but with students from across the state of Georgia in her job running the
day-to-day operations of the Bio-Bus program. The program sends a mobile
science teaching lab to schools around the state for lessons that are designed
to spark students’ interest in science.
In addition to planning the
visits and setting the schedules of the graduate students who work on the bus,
Edwards also helps put together grant proposals. Last year, the university was
awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Howard Hughes foundation, partly to
support the Bio-Bus program.
Edwards, who has a Ph.D. in
medieval history, is the only non-scientist working for the program. She thinks
that gives her an advantage when talking to the schoolteachers who call her.
“Like a lot of the teachers I
deal with, science is something I’m a little bit afraid of,” she said with a
grin. “I try to make it easy for them.”
Edwards said she was delighted
to receive the junior staff award. It’s a real honor, she said – and besides, she
finds the title itself immensely entertaining.
“I’m nearly 58 and I’m the
outstanding junior staff member,” she
said. “I am so pleased.”
