Barbara Bart, a professor of marketing at Savannah State University, has been named SSU’s Regents’ Distinguished Professor for Teaching and Learning for the 1999-2000 academic year.
         The Regents’ Distinguished Professor award is granted annually to a professor at SSU by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. To be nominated, a professor must be a member of the faculty who demonstrates excellence in teaching. SSU faculty members are asked to nominate candidates, who are subsequently judged on criteria including student evaluations, department chair and/or dean evaluations, peer evaluations, excerpts from promotion and tenure letters and various anecdotal information.
          "Dr. Bart is the epitome of an excellent professor," said Joseph H. Silver, Sr., Vice President for Academic Affairs. "She engages in innovative teaching methods and encourages students to learn by doing."
         Bart joined the SSU faculty in 1981, working as assistant professor, associate professor and now professor of marketing. She began her teaching career at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, where she served as an instructor of marketing from 1977-1978. She assumed an assistant professorship in marketing at Georgia Southern University from 1978-1982.
          Bart has authored and coauthored numerous articles for journals, including American Business Review, Women in Management Review, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education and Journal of Business Education.
          Throughout her career, Bart has received numerous honors and academic recognition, including Marketing Educator of the Year by the Georgia Association of Marketing Educators in 1998. Previous honors include serving as a Nissan Fellow at Northwestern University in 1990 and 1996 and being inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma honor society at the University of Georgia in 1980 and at Georgia Southern in 1981.
          Bart received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and a master of business administration degree in finance and marketing from the University of Rochester in New York. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Georgia.

Making a Case for Service Learning

          I have been assembling all types of resources about the educational value of serviceLearning experiences for our students. There is a tremendous wealth of information and I would like to invite you to explore the application of this method with me. There are curricula for biology, literature, humanities, business, political science, and more. I am also assembling a list of service learning opportunities in Savannah. All of this will be housed in the Center for Teaching and Learning.
          If you are interested in learning more about how serviceLearning can be used in your classes, I would like for you to call me at 353-3084 or contact me via e-mail (bartb@savstate.edu) so that we can make serviceLearning an integral part of your students’ experience at SSU. Similarly, if you are already doing this with your students, please tell me what you have been doing and we can organize an interdisciplinary group of faculty with a common interest.
          For students to learn effectively, they first need to be engaged. ServiceLearning helps promote both intellectual and civic engagement by linking the work students do in the classroom to real-world problems and real-world needs. Without compromising academic rigor or discipline-specific objectives, serviceLearning can give students concrete reasons for doing their personal best (AAHE Series on ServiceLearning in the Disciplines, 1997).

Distinguished Professor to Host Series of Lectures and Workshops

          Two years ago, Dr. Charles Elmore initiated the Distinguished Professor Lecture Series to highlight the scholarly work of all faculty members here at Savannah State. The goals were to share our academic interests and to encourage scholarly activity of a cross-disciplinary nature. Last year, Dr. Kenneth Sajwan also hosted several presentations form the sciences, business and social sciences.
          The tradition continues again this year under the direction of Dr. Barbara Bart. Dr. Bart is currently preparing a schedule of topics ranging from a workshop in the use of EXCEL for data analysis by Dr. Shinemin Lin, to a presentation of "What’s in a Name?" the award winning paper by Dr. Jane Philbrick and Professor Mollie Sparks. Other topics that have been proposed include: "Environmental Radiation and Community Radiation and Community Concern" by Dr. Gian Ghuman, "Distance Learning: Education or Economics," by Dr. Jack Simmons, "Incremental Radicalism: A Strategy for Social Change," By Dr. Otis Johnson, and a very intriguing discussion of the convergence of science and social science entitled, "Is it Time for Consilience? Or, Should We Use the Scientific Method to Solve Social Problems?" by Dr. Eugene Mesco.
          Faculty members who wish to participate as presenters of seminars, lectures, or workshops are invited to submit their topics to Dr. Barbara Bart. A schedule of all presentations will be published.