Actionline NEA

Teaching Excellence Awards

Higher education faculty included in NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education teaching award competition.

Janice Hayes, an NEA higher education member from Tennessee, is a finalist for the NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence.

As one of five finalists for this national award, Hayes has also received a Horace Mann-NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence.

The latter award carries with it a gift of $10,000 and financial support to attend the Foundation's seventh annual Salute to Excellence in Education, December 6 in Washington, DC, where the winner of The NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence will be announced.

Hayes, who has taught at Middle Tennessee State University for 28 years, is past president of the MTSU Education Association and three-time MTSU teacher of the year.

With the help of this year's NEA Higher Education Competitive Membership Grants, NEA higher education affiliates in a dozen states are getting ready to grow their unions.

Projects range from organizing new units of part-time faculty in Michigan and shoring up Association membership in community colleges in Alabama and California, to launching a higher education program in Mississippi and merging statewide bargaining units in Minnesota.

This NEA Higher Ed program provides grants of up to $10,000 for new, local Association membership growth programs.

Local affiliates can apply through NEA's regional offices for next year's grants. To find out more, E-mail: HigherEd@nea.org.

December 14 is the cutoff date for early registration for the 2002 NEA Higher Education Conference. The theme of this year's conference: "The Academy in Transition: Patterns of Change in Higher Education."

For registration information and materials, visit www.nea.org/he or E-mail HigherEd@nea.org