Four Southwestern University employees were honored in August for exemplary service to the university.

The four received the Joe S. Mundy Exemplary Service Award, which was created in 2002 as a memorial to the leadership of former alumnus and Trustee Joe Mundy. The award honors faculty and staff members who have demonstrated exemplary service to Southwestern.

This year’s award winners were Alison Kafer, associate professor of feminist studies; Dirk Early, professor of economics; Lou Ann Moore, senior executive secretary in University Relations; and former registrar David Stones.

Kafer has been a member of the Southwestern faculty since 2004. In addition to chairing the Feminist Studies Program for many years, she served as chair of the committee that was responsible for developing Southwestern’s Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) for its recent reaccreditation process. Kafer is now overseeing the implementation of this new interdisciplinary program that is at the heart of Southwestern’s academic program.

Early has been a member of the Southwestern faculty since 1994. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he has served as chair of the Economics and Business Department and as associate dean of the Brown College of Arts and Sciences.

He also has served on the Academic Affairs Council, the Faculty Affairs Council, and the Academic Assessment Committee, and organized both the Brown Working Paper series and the  Faculty Forum lunches for a number of years.

Among his many accomplishments as associate dean of the Brown College,  Early has developed and implemented an annual faculty salary study, led efforts to approve an external review process for tenure and promotion, and taken a leadership role in implementing our four-credit curriculum.

He has done all this while maintaining an active research program and being an outstanding teacher in the classroom, as evidenced by his two teaching awards.

Moore has been a member of the Southwestern staff for 22 years. She has served on the Staff Affairs Council for several terms and was the driving force behind creating a mentor program for new staff members. She also has served on the Fringe Benefits Committee and on an Ad Hoc Committee that addressed post-retirement benefits.

Outside Southwestern, Moore is an active member of Grace Presbyterian Church in Round Rock.

Stones served registrar from 2000 to 2012 and is currently serving as interim director of institutional research. For the past 11 years, he has led a popular Destination: Service trip over spring break that takes students to do trail maintenance for the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness.

Stones also has been active with the Boy Scout troop in Round Rock, serving as treasurer since 2001 and taking scouts to the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico each summer.

This is the second award Stones has received this year. In March, UT-Austin presented him with its Arno Nowotny Medal in recognition of his service when he was associate registrar and database coordinator in the Division of Student Affairs.

At the 2013 commencement ceremony in May, President emeritus Jake B. Schrum also presented the Mundy Award to Ella Sedwick, who works for Southwestern’s food service provider, Sodexo. Students frequently mention Sedwick as one of the things they like most about Southwestern.

 

Southwestern University is a selective, nationally recognized undergraduate liberal arts college with an enrollment of 1,500 students. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in Texas. For more information on Southwestern, visit www.southwestern.ed