Illinois State University will honor 17 faculty for teaching and research during the Founders Day Convocation at 2 p.m. Thursday, February 21, in the Bone Student Center Brown Ballroom.
Rachel Bowden, Biological Sciences, and Steven Taylor, Marketing, were named the 2012 Outstanding University Researchers. The award goes to faculty whose research has been acknowledged by their peers in the U.S. and internationally.
Virginia Teas Gill, Sociology and Anthropology, and Denise Wilson, Mennonite College of Nursing, are the 2013 Outstanding University Teachers. The award is given to faculty whose teaching accomplishments are unusually significant and meritorious among their colleagues. Lynn Kennell, MCN, is the Outstanding University Teacher, Category II, for non-tenured faculty.
Rachel Bowden, Biological Sciences, came to Illinois State University in 2003 after earning her doctorate at Indiana University. Her research centers around steroid hormones, sex determination, and early embryonic development; incubation environment; and ecoimmunology. Last year she was awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Steven Taylor has been a faculty member of the Marketing Department for 20 years. He has investigated customers’ behavior and loyalty. He also is a recognized subject matter expert in digital piracy. He served as a principal investigator in ISU’s Digital Citizenship Project. He has been a co-editor of the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction & Complaining Behavior. Taylor was awarded the College of Business Teaching Award, recognized twice in the College of Business for Outstanding Research, and serves as the 2012 inaugural Hinderliter Chair of Business.
Virginia Teas Gill, Sociology and Anthropology, received her B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and began her career as an assistant professor at Illinois State in 1996.
Gill is a medical sociologist whose research focuses on the interaction between doctors and patients in a variety of medical settings; currently, she is analyzing interaction between surgeons and breast cancer patients. She has received several awards for teaching, including the 2000-2001 University Teaching Initiative Award and 2006-2007 Outstanding College Teacher Award at Illinois State.
Denise Wilson, MCN, is an associate professor and the Family Nurse Practitioner sequence leader. She received her B.S. in nursing from Illinois Wesleyan University, her M.S. in nursing from the University of Illinois, and her Ph.D. in educational administration & foundations from Illinois State. She completed the Family Nurse Practitioner post-graduate program at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
She has been teaching nursing since 1980, and joined Illinois State in 1999. Wilson is nationally certified in three advanced practice nursing specialties: Family Nurse Practitioner, Adult Nurse Practitioner, and Gerontological Nurse Practitioner. She also maintains a part-time clinical practice.
Wilson has received the MCN Graduate Program Teaching Excellence Award 12 times, the Outstanding College Teacher Award in 2002, and the College’s Innovative Teaching Award in 2005. In 2012, she received grants for more than $1.1 million for nursing workforce diversity, and almost $700,000 for advanced nursing education traineeships.
Lynn Kennell, MCN, is an instructional assistant professor and has taken nursing students on transcultural experiences in Texas and Chicago’s Little Village. She practiced obstetrics and pediatrics nursing and came to Illinois State in 1999. She has received the Kathleen Hogan Teaching Excellence Award several times. She is working on establishing a course for nursing students in Londrina, Brazil. She has had several articles published in the journal Nurse Educator.
