Dr. Honora Chapman, professor of Classics and Humanities and director of the Smittcamp Family Honors College, has been awarded the top teaching honor at Fresno State.

Provost Bill Covino named Chapman as recipient of the 2013 Excellence in Teaching Award.

The Provost’s Awards also honored the following individuals and departments: 

  • Henry Delcore, professor of Anthropology, Faculty Service Award
  • Shane Moreman, associate professor of Communication, Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award
  • Alam Hasson, professor of Chemistry, Research, Scholarship and Creative Accomplishment Award
  • Miles Ishigaki, professor of Music, Technology in Education Award
  • Department of Criminology 

In addition, Covino named four faculty members for the Promising New Faculty award, which recognizes exemplary achievements in teaching, research/creative activities and/or service among non-tenured, tenure-track faculty. 

Honorees are Linda Hauser, assistant professor of Educational Research and Administration; Carmen Caprau, assistant professor of Mathematics; T. Hasan Johnson, assistant professor of Africana and American Indian studies; and Kevin Kuswa, assistant professor of Communications.

The awards include stipends of $5,500 for the Excellence in Teaching recipient and $3,000 each to the other awardees.

Dr. Honora Chapman, sees her vocation as one of helping students reach their true potential in whatever they hope to pursue in life.

Chapman is an internationally recognized expert on the Jewish historian Josephus and the 1st century A.D. She has published widely on these topics and presented at numerous international conferences. This scholarly activity has kept her up-to-date on developments in her field, a knowledge she brings to her teaching. 

Her commitment to student learning is apparent in her constant effort to innovate and always improve her courses, be it new topics, new textbooks, new technologies or new approaches to classroom discussions and interaction. Students recognize her commitment and respond in kind.

Her masterful grasp of subject matter inspires confidence and admiration in her students, and her challenging methods of engaging young minds foster genuine intellectual curiosity and a strong desire to learn more. Her classroom is an environment wherein everyone is encouraged to express their ideas, and she equips her students with the tools to explore and analyze both their own ideas and the ideas of others.

Faculty Service Award
Henry Delcore, who joined the Fresno State faculty in 2000, has been instrumental in leading the El Dorado Park Community Development Corporation, tasked with supporting the revitalization of one of the most distressed neighborhoods in the City of Fresno, and he has been the president of the board since its incorporation. On campus, he has been involved in the International Task Force, using his skills as a qualitative researcher to provide data and evidence about international student experiences on campus. He is also currently conducting a campus-based ethnography that will inform Fresno State Administrative leadership about how students use technology at Fresno State. He is co-author of The Library Study, a design anthropology report for Administrative leadership on how Fresno State’s Henry Madden Library might better adapt its services to student practices while still accomplishing the educational mission of an academic library.  Finally, he has integrated fieldwork training for cultural anthropology students with numerous local organizations, helping students learn by using ethnography to solve real world problems.

Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award
Dr. Shane Moreman has been at Fresno State since 2003 and has established a record of graduate teaching and mentoring, plus chairing graduate committees. His mentoring relationships extend well beyond contact hours and advising graduate students through comprehensive exams, projects or theses. His work with graduate students serves as a prototype of excellent graduate mentoring that has led to numerous graduate student achievements. For nine years, his critical ethnographic work has been integral to the Department of Communication’s intercultural communication curriculum. He works collaboratively with other departments helping their graduate students. His graduate students have given 15 presentations at international, national and regional communication conferences. One was the National Communication Association’s Top Student Paper and three have been awarded the organization’s western states’ Top Student Debut Paper.

Research, Scholarship and Creative Accomplishment Award
Dr. Alam Hasson, who has been at Fresno State since 2001, has made important contributions to his field of atmospheric chemistry. Specifically, he and his students study the kinetics and mechanisms of atmospheric processes, field measurements of air pollutants, and their health impacts. His work has been consistently published in prestigious, high impact-factor journals, including The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Environmental Science and Technology, Atmospheric Environment, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, and The Journal of Chromatography B. In addition, he and his students have presented their research work at more than 100 professional conferences and invited talks. He has been awarded approximately $4.7 million in extramural research funding as a principal investigator since joining Fresno State.

Technology in Education Award

Dr. Miles Ishigaki has been at Fresno State since 1987. He is active in Technology Innovations for Learning and Teaching initiatives. He was one of 2013’s eScholar course redesigners, and he participated in both the 2012 summer redesign academy and the 2011 syllabus redesign group. He is also part of TILT’s pilot ePortfolio project, beginning in 2011 with the Digication system. In 2006, he collaborated with computer engineers in Tokyo to increase the potential for using music technology. The iBook authors of Hooktheory were so impressed with his use of technology in education they asked him to collaborate with them to create more learning experiences with technology in music. Described as a global thinker, he has a vision for academic technology is not confined to music courses. He was a professor of entrepreneurship in the Lyles Center and is currently a student in Fresno State’s MBA program.

Distinguished Achievement in Assessment of Learning
The Department of Criminology in the College of Social Sciences implemented an undergraduate Student Outcome Assessment Plan (SOAP) that provides direct and indirect measures of student learning. The effort was led by Dr. Yoshiko Takahashi, who has served as the SOAP Coordinator since 2011. Dr. Takahashi used input from the faculty to redesign the former SOAP into a tool that accurately assessed the breadth of the program. Developing and implementing a SOAP for a department with more than 1,500 students required great organization and attention to detail, as well as a strong command of data collection, statistical tools and analysis.

2013 Promising New Faculty

Linda Hauser has been at Fresno State since 2008 and has been committed to university service as a member of 19 committees. Currently, she serves on the University Learning Assessment Team and coordinates the Educational Administration program. She serves as program developer, facilitator and presenter for the Executive Instructional Leadership Program for Rural Central Valley School Network, part of the Central Valley Educational Leadership Institute.

Carmen Caprau has been at Fresno State since 2007. Since her arrival, she has nine research papers accepted for publication. She has maintained a strong research program in mathematical knot theory and mentors undergraduate student research projects. Her successful research and mentoring program has been recognized nationally, as demonstrated by the funding of a $78,532 National Science Foundation research grant.


T. Hasan Johnson has been at Fresno State since 2008. He uses social media and the Internet to enhance his teaching, such as his Black Masculinities website, an online source that drives his student’s interviews with community-based senior citizens. In 2010, he created Africana Studies’ Annual Hip-Hop Research and Interview Project to bring significant artist-activists to campus.


Kevin Kuswa has been at Fresno State since 2011. Under his direction, Fresno State’s debate team has regained national recognition, not only for excellence in competitive policy debate, but also for the promotion of public advocacy through public debate forums. He has published articles in journals, and actively participated in the Cohort for Urban and Regional Transformation.

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