FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 03/14/2008

BC To Honor Andrew Young, Faculty On Founder's Day April 1

BRIDGEWATER, Va. — Bridgewater College will celebrate the 128th anniversary of its founding on Tuesday, April 1, presenting several awards during the 11 a.m. convocation in the Carter Center for Worship and Music.

President Phillip C. Stone will award Andrew Jackson Young Jr., civil rights activist and former ambassador to the United Nations, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa in recognition and appreciation of his years of devoted service to mankind and his country. Two faculty members will also be recognized for excellence in teaching. Dr. K. Gary Adams, professor of music, will receive the Ben and Janice Wade Outstanding Teaching Award, and Dr. Alice L. Trupe, associate professor of English, will receive the Martha B. Thornton Faculty Recognition Award.

The Founder's Day observance at Bridgewater commemorates the April 3, 1854, birth of Daniel Flory, who at age 26 began a new school at Spring Creek in Rockingham County. The school, first known as Spring Creek Normal School, moved to Bridgewater two years later, in 1882, and changed its name to Bridgewater College on July 12, 1889.

About the honorees:

Andrew Jackson Young Jr. is a civil- and human-rights activist, former U.S. congressman and mayor of Atlanta, and the U.S.'s first black ambassador to the United Nations.

After his graduation from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1951 with a degree in biology, Young earned a divinity degree from Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut and accepted the pastorate of Bethany Congregational Church in Thomasville, Ga., in 1955. He involved himself in civil rights causes and joined the National Council of Churches in 1957.

In 1961, Young left his church to work with the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization led by Martin Luther King Jr. Young became a trusted aide to King and rose to the executive directorship of the SCLC. He was instrumental in organizing voter registration and desegregation campaigns in Albany, Ga., Birmingham and Selma, Ala., and Washington, D.C. He was with King when the civil rights leader was killed in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.

In 1972, Young won Georgia's Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and became the first black since Reconstruction to be elected to Congress from Georgia. He supported the 1976 presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter who, in 1977 named Young ambassador to the United

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Nations, a position he held until 1979. Young returned to Atlanta and, in 1981, was elected the city's mayor. He won re-election in 1985 and was instrumental in bringing the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to the city.

Young is currently a Distinguished Executive Fellow and Honorary Professor of Public Policy at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.

He has published two books: A Way Out of No Way and An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. He is currently writing a memoir on Africa.

For Dr. K. Gary Adams, teaching is all about having been taught.

"If I have any skill at all in the art of teaching, it is because I was privileged to study with several excellent teachers in high school, as an undergraduate in college, and in graduate school," said Adams, who has taught music at Bridgewater College since 1982.

Those teachers, he said, advocated an unending thirst for knowledge and a desire to lead by example _ admonitions Adams took to heart.

Adams, a native of Ardmore, Okla., earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in music from Baylor University, and his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Texas.

After teaching at a number of other institutions, Adams came to Bridgewater College in 1982 as an assistant professor of music. He became an associate professor in 1985 and a professor in 1992.

In addition to his teaching and research, Adams has thrown himself into the life of the College by serving on numerous committees, including the Council on Education, the Institutional Self-Study Committee, the Committee on Cultural Affairs and the Committee on Promotion and Tenure. In 1982 he was one of three people appointed by Ben Wade to establish the Bridgewater College Leadership Society on campus.

Adams, who has published two books and written widely for professional journals, also belongs to Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society, Omicron Delta Kappa Society and the American Musicological Society. He and his wife, Mary Kay (who has also taught as an adjunct professor of music at Bridgewater College) live in Bridgewater, and have two sons _ Evan of College Station, Texas, and Brian, of Arlington, Va.

His receipt of the Ben and Janice Wade Outstanding Teaching Award at Bridgewater upholds the standard of excellence honored by Bridgewater alumni Ben and Janice Wade, who established the award in 1998 to recognize excellence in classroom teaching. Dr. Ben Wade taught religion and served as executive assistant to the president and provost at Bridgewater from 1979-85.

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Dr. Alice L. Trupe says, "The metaphors I most often choose to describe my teaching are `coach' or `cheerleader.'" Trupe noted that since writing and critical thinking are complex skills that develop over time, guided practice of these skills improves the student's performance _ hence the coaching metaphor. And, she said, students often need lots of encouragement before they can exert the persistent effort it takes to improve _ hence the cheerleading metaphor.

Trupe earned her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

At Bridgewater, where she began as an assistant professor of English in 1997, Trupe is director of composition and the Writing Center, teaching writing, linguistics and literature courses. She helps faculty members develop writing workshop activities for their classes, assists them in using computer environments for writing instruction, and trains writing tutors.

Widely published in professional journals, Trupe is also affiliated with the Philomathes Society of Bridgewater College, the National Council of Teachers of English, the International Writing Centers Association, the Modern Language Association, the Children's Literature Association, the Jane Austen Society of North American and Rhetoricians for Peace. She has also given many presentations at conferences across the country.

Trupe is a member of the women's choir, Daughters of Song, in Harrisonburg, Va., a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Waynesboro, Va., and a volunteer at North River Library in Bridgewater.

She has two daughters, Mary and Natalie Tasillo.

The Martha B. Thornton Faculty Recognition Award, established in 1990, honors faculty who "provide caring concern for students well beyond the role as teacher." Thornton, professor of religion emerita, modeled that style of teaching. Trupe, through loyalty to her students and her efforts to teach English by demonstrating her own dedication to the disciplines, upholds the Thornton tradition.

Bridgewater College, a private, four-year liberal arts college, enrolls more than 1,500 students. Founded in 1880 and located in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, it was the state's first private, coeducational senior college.

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