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FACULTY FOCUS Linda Schultz
Dr. Javier Garza has been promoted to vice president for a new Division of Enrollment Management.
For the past three years he has guided enrollment programs as assistant vice president of Enrollment Management. The new division adds student success and multicultural initiatives and offsite programs in Fort Worth, Waco, Midlothian and the Global Campus.
Garza joined Tarleton in 1994 and served as head of the Department of Mathematics for seven years and director of the Division of General Studies and Testing, precursor to the Office of Student Success and Multicultural Initiatives, for three years.
Dr. Rudy Tarpley delivers 2017 ‘Last Lecture’
Dr. Rudy Tarpley, professor of agricultural and consumer sciences, gave the fourth annual talk in Tarleton’s Last Lecture Series, focusing on “Making a Positive Difference.”
The Last Lecture Series invites professors to share what they would say if it were their last opportunity to address colleagues and students, a tradition that began at UCLA in 1955.
A former high school agriculture teacher, Tarpley joined Tarleton in 2010 following stints at Texas Tech, Eastern New Mexico and Utah State universities.
For more information about the Last Lecture Series at Tarleton, visit tarleton.edu/ facultyfellows/lastlecture.html.
Texas Music Teachers honor Spotz
Piano Professor Dr. Leslie Spotz received the Texas Music Teachers Association 2017 Award for Outstanding Collegiate Teaching Achievement. The honor is given for success in music performance, composition, theory, history or any combination.
Spotz also received this year’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts Faculty Excellence in Scholarship Award. Her international performing career spans four decades and four continents, including solo performances at Tchaikovsky Hall of Moscow 4 University, South Bank Center of London and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Faculty Focus Linda Schultz
In middle of three generations of scientists
BY MARY G. SALTARELLI
Daughter of a renowned biology professor and mother of a medical lab sciences professor, Dr. Linda Schultz is the natural bond connecting three generations of scientists in her family. Growing up an only child, Schultz accompanied her father on field trips with his students at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.
“He was an avid researcher whose enthusiasm for science was contagious, and his students were part of our family,” Schultz said of her father, Dr. Walter Dalquest, a mammologist and paleontologist who inspired her to become a professor. “Now I feel the way my father often said he felt: ‘I feel guilty to be getting paid to do what I would be doing if I could choose my career.’”
Approaching her 40th year as a chemistry professor at Tarleton, Schultz has motivated many to pursue careers as chemists, including her own daughter, Dr. Michelle McAfee, and her former student, Dr. Kayla Green, a professor at Texas Christian University.
“Dr. Shultz is a strong mentor and I appreciate her continued active role in my career,” Green said. “Her classes were special—more like a conversation than a class. She clearly loved the subject, but made it accessible to students on every level. That art is extremely rare in the field of science.”
During her career, Schultz has developed a couple of “bugs” about teaching. The first is that her classes are very structured because of the nature of the subject matter.
“All students are different and they don’t all learn the same way,” Schultz said. “I try to be flexible and respond to their needs within the class structure.”
Schultz’s daily quizzes encourage students to keep up with material, and supplemental instruction provides another three hours each week of learning through tutoring sessions
led by peers who have completed the course.
“Sometimes my students come to me apologetically and tell me they learned more in supplemental instruction than in my class,” Schultz said. “When they leave, I think, ‘Yes! They fell into my trap!’ Students need more depth on the topics than the class alone provides.”
Schultz’s second “bug” is teaching her students how to conduct scientific research and report their findings.
“New discoveries enable the body of knowledge in chemistry to grow,” Schultz said. “The lab is where the fun in chemistry happens and success there is essential to professional development as chemists.”
Schultz and her students are active in the campus chemistry club and regional branch of the American Chemical Society. With her encouragement, students present their research at local and national conferences.
Jennifer Garcia, a senior chemistry and biomedical science major, said Schultz taught her to conduct effective research, and they co-authored two published articles on their studies of potentiometric titration.
“After a few months with Dr. Schultz, my laboratory techniques, accuracy and precision greatly improved,” Garcia said. “She reinforced that I was meant for chemistry through her time and dedication not only to our research, but to me, as well. She took me under her wing and now I not only fly, I soar.”
In 2013, Schultz received a statewide Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award, honoring her outstanding academic, scientific and scholarly achievements and her dedication to the teaching profession. She received a Texas A&M University System Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012 and, in 2014, was named a Regents Professor for the A&M System.
Karl Mueller, a candidate for both medical and doctoral degrees at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, said Schultz was instrumental in his education.
“Her method of instruction helped the difficult discipline of science make sense to students,” Mueller said. “She was a fantastic mentor who taught me critical skills that have helped me in graduate school and will help me in my future career.”
During Schultz’s tenure, which included serving as chemistry department head for 10 years, she has seen student enrollment at Tarleton more than quadruple from 3,000 to 13,000 students. Some of her current teaching colleagues were once her pupils.
“New students now come in my office bearing greetings from their parents, who I taught,” Schultz said, laughing. “I think when students start bringing me regards from their grandparents who were my former pupils, I may chuck it in and retire.” Melanie Johnson joins Tarleton as director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, part of the Division of Student Affairs. The office fosters a campus community that values the dignity and contributions of all students, faculty and staff.
Johnson comes from Tulane University, where she served as associate director of intercultural life and instructed a class on facilitating difficult conversations on social justice in 160 different settings. She previously served as coordinator of multicultural affairs at Southern Methodist University.
A Texas native, Johnson has a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in education from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Dr. Teresa Davidian was named executive director of the Academic Advising Center, following an 11-year stint as head of the Department of Fine Arts.
Davidian joined Tarleton in 1994 as assistant professor of music theory and history. She received the Student Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence in 2010 and 2011, and the O.A. Grant Excellence in Teaching Award in 2005. She was named Outstanding Faculty Adviser of the Year (Mu Phi Epsilon) in 2002.
She earned her Ph.D. in theory and musicology from the University of Chicago, her master’s in music theory from Columbia University and her bachelor’s from Barnard College.
Dr. Denae Dorris has been named director for the Center for Transformative Learning. In her new role, she is responsible for Tarleton’s applied and experiential learning initiatives, while continuing to lead community engagement efforts. Dorris came to Tarleton in 2010 as a project manager for the American Clearinghouse on Educational Facilities. Since 2014, she has served as director of Academic Outreach and Engagement.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in history, her master’s in educational administration and her doctorate in educational leadership from Tarleton. 5
University Unveils Bronze of James Earl Rudder
BY CECILIA JACOBS
James Earl Rudder came home twice as one of America’s most decorated military heroes.
Once to his beloved family in Brady after leading a group of Army Rangers up the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in Normandy.
Once to his beloved Tarleton in Stephenville when the university unveiled a life-size bronze of the major general.
Neither will ever be forgotten.
Members of the Tarleton Corps of Cadets with Tarleton President F. Dominic Dottavio, Maj. Gen. James Earl Rudder’s daughter, Linda Williams, son, Bud Rudder, and daughter, Anne Erdman, with the unveiled statue of the Rudder, a military hero and Tarleton alumnus.
Home Again
Nor will Rudder’s post-Normandy participation in the Battle of the Bulge, which contributed to the Allied victory in World War II.
Or the dedication of a pedestrian walkway in his honor, the culmination of Tarleton’s yearlong centennial celebration as a founding member of The Texas A&M University System.
The public unveiling of the statue and dedication of Rudder Way followed this fall’s meeting of the A&M System Board of Regents on the Stephenville campus.
It was the grandest of finales.
Tarleton’s marching band, The Sound & The Fury, the trumpet ensemble and the university choir provided music. The Texan Corps of Cadets posted colors.
There were remarks and recognitions, and thunderous applause with the debut of Rudder’s bronze between the Nursing Building and Wisdom Gym.
Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp called Rudder the greatest Tarleton Texan and Aggie ever produced.
In 1927, Rudder started at Tarleton (then a two-year college), where he captained the championship football team, became an ROTC lieutenant and majored in civil engineering before moving on to complete his bachelor’s degree at Texas A&M. He returned to Tarleton in 1938, serving as teacher, head football coach and athletic director until entering active military duty in 1941.
Remembered as Texas A&M’s most innovative president, Rudder transformed a regional all-male military school into the renowned university of today. The school became coed and integrated, and he championed its research. When Rudder died in 1970 he was chancellor of the A&M System, having spent his final day on the Tarleton campus.
Charles Schwartz, chairman of the A&M System Board of Regents, told the crowd that Rudder pushed A&M from its image as a “stodgy small school focused on agriculture, and not much more, to a pioneering research center.”
Yet no place was more important to the major general than Tarleton.
“It’s where he discovered who he was and what he wanted to be,” said Tarleton President F. Dominic Dottavio. “He arrived with less than $100 and everything he owned in a cardboard suitcase. He and Tarleton were changed forever.” Continued on next page.
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Shortly after the unveiling of the Rudder statue, students have begun leaving pennies on the statue’s boots and platform. The Student Government Association passed new legislation ruling that “Rudder’s Two Cents” will become a new tradition at Tarleton to represent luck and respect.
In addition to Chancellor Sharp and A&M regents, 30 members of the Rudder family attended the unveiling of the statue created by Tarleton Distinguished Alumnus Mike Tabor and funded by regent Anthony “Tony” Buzbee.
Buzbee had passed a statue of Rudder at Texas A&M hundreds of times and thought it made perfect sense for Tarleton to have one, too. When Chancellor Sharp asked if he’d pay for the statue’s casting and delivery, Buzbee jumped at the chance to bring Rudder home. Like Rudder, Buzbee is a Texas Aggie. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from A&M and a law degree summa cum laude from the University of Houston Law School.
“Bringing Rudder home to Tarleton was the right thing to do,” Buzbee said. “I think it’s what he’d want.”
Tabor graduated from Tarleton in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in art. One of America’s most respected Western Expressionist painters and an accomplished sculptor, he started to work on the Rudder bronze at year’s end 2015, taking eight months to create a statue that portrays the military hero as a true American solider and leader. It wasn’t easy.
Working with limited photos of Rudder, Tabor asked his own son, Ben, to pose in a World War II Eisenhower jacket to capture the stance of a stoic but serene U.S. Army general.
“My goal was to honor a fellow Tarleton alumnus with something meaningful for others to look at,” Tabor said, “and to inspire them to live the Rudder way.” Based on the cheers of the crowd, Tabor outdid himself.
“This monument to honor Rudder as a distinguished alumnus, heroic soldier and forward-thinking leader is truly fitting as we come to the end of our centennial celebration,” Dottavio said. “He will long be remembered for the Rudder way of doing things and as a true example of Tarleton’s core values.”
And what was the Rudder way? In his own words: • Tradition – “Resolve to keep our heritage.” • Integrity – “Do the right thing regardless of what is happening.” • Civility – “We don’t always agree, but we do try to find the best solutions.” • Leadership – “If you will lead, you must learn to follow.” • Excellence – “Your watchword and goals should always be excellence.” • Service – “Leave everything better than you find it.”
These quotes and Tarleton’s six core values will line the new pedestrian walkway leading to the Rudder statue, and Vanderbilt Street on campus now is Rudder Way.
Before the greatest Texan and Aggie ever produced left John Tarleton Agricultural College to serve in World War II, he told those closest to him that he looked forward to his return.
Well, Maj. Gen. James Earl Rudder, welcome home. Again.
Watch the unveiling of the Rudder statue at tarleton.edu/rudderdedication
