(SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – March 27, 2017) Anant Deshpande, a faculty mentor/area coordinator in Business, Management and Economics with SUNY Empire State College’s Saratoga location was awarded the Empire State College Foundation Award for Excellence in Mentoring at the All College Conference held in Saratoga Springs.

“I am speechless, humbled and grateful,” Deshpande said. “It is a great honor and privilege to receive this award. I wish to thank the foundation board, the committee, my supervisor, colleagues and students who have supported me throughout my journey at the college. I look forward to continually embracing Boyer’s mission, being compassionate and making a difference in the lives of our students and the community.”

“I congratulate Dr. Deshpande for winning the Susan H. Turben Award for Excellence in Scholarship,” said Merodie A. Hancock, president of the college. “The large number of candidates, the rigorous selection process and the high standards and accomplishments, in terms of teaching, mentoring, scholarship, innovation and community service recipients must achieve, is very impressive. These are people who best represent aspirations of the college community. They have contributed their talents, passions and often their entire careers, to their colleagues, to higher education and adult learning, the communities where they live and work and, most importantly, to the overall success of the college and its students. Dr. Deshpande is an outstanding member of the faculty and is an inspiration to all of us.”

Anant Deshpande joined the faculty of Empire State College in 2009, and has since distinguished himself as a faculty mentor who generously and diligently contributes his extensive expertise in operations management and supply-chain management and related business subjects in ways that serve students and other stakeholders, according to colleagues. He was described as an excellent collaborator with a substantial number and range of scholarly works. His willingness to collaborate with peers and students was noted by those who have worked with him. One of his students praised him for using the Socratic process of learning through the use of stimulating questions that allowed the student to develop his own reasoning process.

Deshpande was instrumental in developing the proposal for the college’s second undergraduate certificate in manufacturing management. He collaborated with colleagues to develop the concept paper and shepherd it through the process of becoming a certificate. In addition, he “consistently and skillfully” involves his students in their own degree-planning process, as well as in research and writing collaborations. His collaborations with current or former students, adjuncts and faculty colleagues have been published in peer-reviewed journals and in conference proceedings on a range of topics such as social media marketing, the Americans with Disabilities Act, leadership, supply chain management and concurrent engineering. He is someone who “generously and consistently reaches out to create partnerships that help others fulfill their own professional goals and objectives,” according to Julie Gedro, associate dean for business.

About the Foundation Award for Excellence in Mentoring

The criteria for selection for this award include: superb performance as a mentor, including the areas of teaching, student advising, scholarship, and service to the College.  Additionally, the recipient must demonstrate mastery of teaching methods, have an ability to work with students from a variety of backgrounds and academic preparations, and sets high standards in actively helping students attain academic excellence.  The recipient mentor is someone who is applauded by his or her colleagues, students and peers in the discipline.

About SUNY Empire State College

Empire State College, the nontraditional, open college of the SUNY system yearly, educates nearly 19,000 students worldwide at eight international sites, more than 30  locations across 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 is 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 coursework on site, 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 78,000 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