(SYRACUSE, N.Y. – July 9, 2014)  Julie Gedro, SUNY Empire State College associate professor of business, management and economics, is a 2014 recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

SUNY System Administration and Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher characterize individuals selected for this honor as role models within the SUNY community. The honor also provides systemwide recognition for consistently superior professional achievement and encourages the ongoing pursuit of excellence.

"Faculty and staff who receive the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence have served their students, fellow faculty and staff, campuses, and communities with the utmost distinction, and it is a great honor to be able to recognize them with the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence,” said Zimpher. “Congratulations to all of this year’s recipients.”

“To be recognized by the Chancellor’s Award is so gratifying and humbling because of the many talented, committed and passionate educators and colleagues serving at Empire State College throughout the state,” Gedro said. “Empire State College shines a bright light of possibility to guide those who seek to enhance their lives through public higher education. I consider my career here to be a privilege. Certainly I share this award with those others who have supported and enabled me to achieve my professional objectives. I am also mindful of the work we have left to do to make education even more accessible and emancipatory.”

“My congratulations go to Julie Gedro for being chosen as among the best faculty across the SUNY system,” said Merodie A. Hancock, president of the college. “Julie’s scholarship and her creative activities are remarkable among her SUNY peers, and the knowledge she has gained through her work makes her a better mentor to her students and a stronger colleague for the faculty, which enriches the Empire State College community of learners throughout Central New York and across the state.”

Gedro holds a B.A. in economics and English from the College of William and Mary, an MBA in information systems from Kennesaw State University and an Ed.D. in human resource development from the University of Georgia. She is certified as a professional in human resources by the Society for Human Resource Management. As a former human resource management and development professional in finance, technology and telecommunications, Gedro’s work is informed by research as well as practice. Her research focuses on leadership, ethics, equity and productivity in organizations.

About the Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence

The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence is presented annually to faculty and staff in six categories: faculty service, librarianship, professional service, scholarship and creative activities and in teaching and classified service.

Through these awards, system administration and the chancellor also publicly proclaim pride in the accomplishment and personal dedication of its instructional faculty, librarians, and staff across its 64 campuses and system administration.

In acknowledgment of their selection, recipients are recognized in the college catalogue as a State University Chancellor's Award for recipient. A certificate and a chancellor’s excellence medallion also are presented to each honoree to commemorate selection. Recipients are honored by their respective campuses during commencement exercises, at academic convocations or at other special events.

About SUNY Empire State College

Empire State College, the nontraditional, open college of the SUNY system, educates more than 20,000 students worldwide at eight international sites, more than 35 locations in the state of New York, online, as well as face to face and through a blend of both, at the associate, bachelor’s and master’s levels.

The average age of an undergraduate student at the college is 35 and graduate students average age 40.

Most Empire State College students are working adults. Many are raising families and meeting civic commitments in the communities where they live, while studying part time.

In addition to awarding credit for prior college-level learning, the college pairs each undergraduate student with a faculty mentor who supports that student throughout his or her college career.

Working with their mentors, students design an individual degree program and engage in guided independent study and course work onsite, online or through a combination of both, which provides the flexibility for students to choose where, when and how to learn.

Students have the opportunity to enroll five times during the year.

The college’s 70,000 alumni are active in their communities as entrepreneurs, politicians, business professionals, artists, nonprofit agency employees, teachers, veterans and active military, union members and more.

The college was first established in 1971 by the SUNY Board of Trustees with the encouragement of the late Ernest L. Boyer, chancellor of the SUNY system from 1970 to 1977.

Boyer also served as United States commissioner of education during the administration of President Jimmy Carter and then as president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

More information about the college is available at www.esc.edu.

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Media contact: David Henahan, director of communications

518-587-2100, ext. 2918

David.Henahan@esc.edu

518-321-7038 (after hours and on weekends)