Society of Plastics Engineers, the global plastics organization, will present Bill Smith (UC ‘62) with the Honored Service Member Award at their Annual Technical Conference in Chicago in June of this year.  This award is a member level and is for achievement over many years in many capacities, regional and global, and is an award held by only an exclusive and limited number of its 20,000 members globally.  This award and the Fellow of the Society Award, are awards of the same station, and are presented to nominated and elected members of the Society each year.  Bill’s most recent job at SPE global level was international vice president and member of the Executive Committee.  He has held every job in SPE’s Southern Section located in Atlanta over the years.  The membership and honor serves him well in the polymers industry, having retired from a career with Mobil Chemical Company’s Plastics Division after many years, and later as a Division Vice President of Ball Corporation’s Plastics Division.

Bill graduated from The University of Chattanooga in 1962 and was an active member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and ROTC. He now lives in Conyers, Georgia with his wife Rowena.

UTC Alumnus Russ Huesman (’83 ) was named as the new head coach of the Chattanooga Mocs football program in December 2008.  Huesman’s hire came one day after he helped lead his former team, the Richmond Spiders, to the NCAA Football Championship Series National Championship. 

We would love to hear from you regarding Coach Huesman’s hire and the Chattanooga Mocs football program.

Learn more about the Chattanooga Mocs football program, including Coach Huesman’s staff, at GoMocs.com.

James McKissic (’95) was recognized in the Chattanooga Times Free Press as a “person to watch” in the Wednesday, December 17, 2008 issue.  McKissic is Chief Operating Officer for the Urban League of Greater Chattanooga where he uses his background in visual arts to postively influence the lives of youth in the greater Chattanooga area.

Read the full article interview here.

Other UTC graduates who were in the the wedding party included Melissa Long (’05), Jessica Smith (’04), Andrea McClain (’05), Susan Chesky (current UTC student), Daniel Cosby (’04), Wesley Napier (’07) and Eric Wiese (’02).

Congratulations Tara and Jeff on your Mocs Marriage. We wish you a very happy life together.

Emily Messler (’08) and Jeremy Dell (’07) married in Chattanooga on July 26, 2008 at the Downtown Clarion Hotel. The couple are residing in Chattanooga. Other Mocs members of the wedding court included Tyler Fields (’07), Samantha Scott (’09), and Alicia Wilson (’08).

Congratulations on your Mocs Marriage!

Zebadiah Taylor (’08) has been awarded a three-year James A. Michener Fellowship in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers.  The program is considered one of the five most highly selective programs in the country and is consistently ranked as one of the top ten graduate programs in creative writing.

Taylor’s poetry writing sample was chosen out of more than 700 submissions in fiction, playwriting, poetry and screenwriting and he becomes one of the twelve newly admitted fellows. Each new fellow receives free tuition, a $25,000 annual stipend for three years with no teaching responsibility, and a $6,000 professional development fund for travel and research.

The Michener Center’s MFA program was started in 1993 after Pulitzer-prize winning novelist James Michener endowed the University of Texas with $18 million to support a writing program.  During the three-year program, students are required to work in two of the four disciplines offered—fiction, poetry, playwriting and screenwriting.  The Michener Center for Writers is housed in the historic J. Frank Dobie house on the University’s campus.

For more information, contact:

Debbie Dewees

Michener Center for Writers

The University of Texas at Austin

(512) 471-1601

ddewees@mail.utexas.edu

www.utexas.edu/academic/mcw

Chancellor Emeritus Frederick Obear recently received the Crystal Apple Award bestowed by the College of Education at Michigan State University, acknowledging him as an outstanding educator and inspirational mentor.

Obear was honored at the Crystal Apple Awards Dinner, held at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing, Michigan.

“Frederick has demonstrated a commitment to excellence in research, pedagogy, administration service in higher education. His experience, knowledge, and aid to higher education combined with a diverse and impressive career warrant this honor,” said Dr. MaryLee Davis, professor in the Michigan State University College of Education, who nominated Obear for the award.

Davis met Obear at his son James’ master’s graduation. That’s when she asked him to speak to a graduate leadership in higher education course.

“As a University of Tennessee alum, I honor Dr. Obear for all he symbolizes to me, and for everything he means to the higher education academy,” Davis said.

Davis also asked Obear to participate in several sessions of her advanced policy course.

“Dr. Obear made a wonderful impression on our students, I can say clearly, and has inspired several to think differently about future career options in higher education,” said Dr. Marilyn Amey, Professor and Chairperson, Department of Educational Administration, Michigan State University.

One of the students Obear inspired was Timothy G. Campbell, a doctoral candidate in Higher Education Administration and graduate assistant at Michigan State University. Obear became a mentor for Campbell after the two were introduced in Campbell’s advanced policy development course.

“Dr. Obear’s willingness to converse with me as a fellow colleague - despite my being twice his junior - has been encouraging. He has listened to my questions, provided insight from experience, and opened his knowledge up to my inquiries,” Campbell said. “He exemplifies the principle that leadership is a role not a career. ”

Obear served as Chancellor of UTC a total of 17 years. He has been Acting Vice President for Academic and International Programs for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. In 1994-95, he chaired the AASCU Board of Directors and continues to coordinate and teach in that organization’s New Presidents’ Academy.

He has been an American Council on Education Fellow, president of the Council of Fellows, and in 1990 received the program’s 25th Anniversary Service Award. He has also been a mentor in the Fellows program and served on several ACE commissions and committees, including the Commission on Minorities in Higher Education, the Labor/Higher Education Forum, and the Commission on Leadership Development. For the past several years, has been a Leadership Team Facilitator for the ACE Fellows.

A native of Massachusetts, Obear received a B. S. degree with high honors from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of New Hampshire as well as an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from his undergraduate alma mater.

Read more UTC news at

www.utc.edu .

From Class Notes

The Tennessee Emergency Medical Services for Children Foundation (TN EMSC) has selected Kevin Brinkmann, MD (’93) as this year’s recipient of the Joseph Weinberg, MD Leadership Award.  This award recognizes his dedication of long-standing service to the life saving needs of the children of Tennessee and support of the principles of the national Emergency Medical Services for Children program. 

Dr. Brinkmann was appointed a member of the Department of Health, Committee on Pediatric Emergency Care (CoPEC) in 2005.  CoPEC is an advisory committee to the Board of Healthcare Facilities and the state Emergency Medical Services Board, which recommends standards for quality care of critically ill and injured children in Tennessee.  Members of this committee serve voluntarily as a public service without compensation.

As part of his duties, Dr. Brinkmann served as a member of the Standards Committee, and subsequently, became Chairman of that committee.  Working with his colleagues, he coordinated and edited a comprehensive revision of the rules and regulations which provide the guidelines for the preparedness to management pediatric emergencies for all hospitals and ambulance services in Tennessee.  The original guidelines had been drafted by CoPEC and accepted by the Tennessee Board of Licensing of Healthcare Facilities in 1998.  The revision drew upon the expertise of representatives from the four children’s hospitals in the state, the Tennessee Hospital Association, the Tennessee Ambulance Services Association, the Rural Health Association of Tennessee, the state Parent-Teacher Association, the Tennessee Department of Health, and the Emergency Medical Services Board, as well as many other individuals.  Organizing, analyzing and formulating the input from these various sources and insuring that the results were in agreement with all nationally recognized standards was a process that took 18 months to complete and produced a 100 page document.

            The Standards Committee, under Dr. Brinkmann’s leadership, is working on developing a standardized hospital transfer agreement for pediatrics.  Since all hospitals in Tennessee do not have the capabilities to provide highly complex medical and surgical services for rare pediatric conditions and life-threatening illness, hospitals must have agreements in place for transferring these patients to hospitals which provide these specialty services.  The administrative forms and the requirements for transfer of medical information had not been uniform across the state, so that, referring hospitals had a separate form and transfer data requirements for each specialty hospital with which they had a transfer agreement.  Dr. Brinkmann and the Standards Committee of CoPEC is bringing together the medical, administrative, and legal counsel of the hospital systems, and together with the Tennessee Hospital Association, developing a uniform transfer form for pediatrics for use across the state.

For these and other leading efforts to promote the best quality care of critically ill and injured children in Tennessee, Dr. Brinkmann was awarded the TN EMSC Joseph Weinberg, MD Leadership Award.

xxx

Dr. Brinkmann is a pediatric critical care specialist at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville where he has been in practice since 2004.  He received his undergraduate degree from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1993 and his medical degree from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis.  He completed a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric critical care at LeBonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis.

Paul Guest (’96) has been published in the November/December 2008 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, which has a circulation of over 60,000 across the nation. Guest received the New Issues Poetry Prize for his first work, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, written in 2003, and the Prairie Schonner Prize in Poetry for his second work, Notes for My Body Double, written in 2007.  Guest also served as an adjunct professor at UTC.  Congratulations Paul.

If you were a member of the cheer squad at the University of Chattanooga or University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, please contact the Mocs Cheer Squad coach, Ashli Skiles, at 423/425-5359 or at ashli-skiles@utc.edu.

From Vols vs. Mocs Basketball Game