Columns:: Above and beyond: Hill Awards recognize faculty contributions that ‘improve the quality of life in Georgia’that ‘improve the quality of life in Georgia’

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 4, 2002

UGA researchers draw first molecular map of peanut plant
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Campus News

Above and beyond
Hill Awards recognize faculty contributions that ‘improve the quality of life in Georgia’

By Nadine Randall
diniran@aol.com

Dan Durning

The Office of Public Service and Outreach announced recipients of the 2002 Walter Barnard Hill Awards and the Distinguished Public Service and Outreach Fellow at a luncheon banquet during the annual conference Jan. 31. Dan Durning of the Vinson Institute of Government was named Hill Fellow. The winners of the Hill Awards were Frances Hensley, education; Mary Stakes, Institute of Government; Connie Crawley, family and consumer sciences Cooperative Extension Service; Debbie Purvis, family and consumer sciences Cooperative Extension Service; and Dan Horton, entomology.
The awards are named for former UGA Chancellor Walter Barnard Hill and recognize distinguished achievement in public service and outreach by faculty members and service professionals. Winners of the Hill Award receive a permanent salary increase of $2,000. The Hill Fellow receives an additional $1,000 permanent salary increase, plus a support fund for use in his or her program of work.
• Dan Durning, director of the Vinson Institute’s International Center for Democratic Governance, was named to the Hill fellowship. As director of ICDG, Durning has overseen the development of new programs that have provided dozens of faculty members and government leaders in Georgia with the opportunity to train and learn abroad.

Frances Hensley

He recently helped UGA secure two major grants from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State for partnerships with institutions in Moscow and Shanghai. Durning also serves as the principal investigator for the institute’s projects in the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine and China. He is heavily involved in public policy research and the university community.
• Frances Hensley is best known for her leadership in improving public schools in Georgia and the nation. She directs both the Program for School Improvement and the Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Program. Under her leadership, teams of faculty from arts and sciences and education at UGA, Valdosta State University and Albany State University are working to achieve a fundamental change in teacher education, one that supports students from the day they enter the university through their first years as classroom educators.
• Mary Stakes has distinguished herself nationally through the development of civic education programs and materials in Georgia. She is the leader and visionary behind the Vinson Institute’s Civic Education Program, which develops educational materials and provides continuing education for Georgia students, teachers, citizens and

Mary Stakes

members of the General Assembly. She was integral to the development of the new eighth-grade Georgia-studies textbook in 1988, and has since directed its revision and expansion as well as writing supplemental materials to support the volume. In 2001, Stakes received the Georgia Outstanding Educator Award from the Georgia Council for Social Studies. The award is considered one of the most prestigious recognitions a university or public school social studies educator can receive in Georgia.
• Connie Crawley has been instrumental in establishing Georgia’s Cooperative Extension Service as a national leader in diabetes education. She created the Right Bite Diabetes Cooking Curriculum, which won the 1996 Creative Nutrition Award from the Diabetes Care and Education Practice Group of the American Diabetic Association. She is the editor and principal writer of the Diabetes Life Lines newsletter, which reaches approximately 8,000 people in Georgia. She also developed the diabetic support-group curriculum Diabetes Connections and the Walk-a-Weigh healthy lifestyle program, which won the second- place award for Outstanding Educational Curriculum Package from the National Association of Extension Family and Consumer Sciences.

Debbie Purvis

• Debbie Purvis has received state, regional and national recognition for her work in food and nutrition education. She was one of the two agents who participated in the University of Veracruz (Mexico) study tour called “Reaching Georgia’s Latino Clientele via the Cooperative Extension Service.” Since then, Purvis has expanded several programs in Colquitt and Worth counties to address the Latino population. She is also heavily involved in nutrition education for low-income children and their families. She developed a six-lesson preschool nutrition curriculum for Head Start classes in Colquitt and Worth counties and conducted the Eating Right Home Study Course for Head Start parents. She also wrote and implemented a peer curriculum for fourth graders in Tift, Turner, Ben Hill and Irwin counties, in which student teachers taught their peers about nutrition.
• Dan Horton has made major contributions to the development and implementation of integrated pest management programs for fruit production systems in the Southeast. He chairs a regional strategic committee for the Southern Fruit Workers that works to regionalize fruit production across the Southeast.
He has developed fruit-pest management publications, reference guides and grant proposals to regionalize the delivery of

Dan Horton

UGA educational services to fruit growers. He figured out how to apply the alternate-row-middle orchard-spray technique to Southeastern peaches and began a reduced-rate program to replace a banned pesticide in Georgia and South Carolina. Horton has been instrumental in leading the Georgia Peach Council to become the first Eastern fruit-producer group to join the EPA’s Pesticide and Environmental Stewardship Program.

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