Organization site - Regional News
Issue: 2/20/01
Susan Sheley Texas adviser of year
By Southern Region News
The Texas Intercollegiate Press Association, which includes colleges and universities from across Texas, has named Susan Cummings Sheley adviser of the year for 2001. The award was presented at the TIPA convention in April at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls.
Sheley has served as student publications adviser at Lee College, a community college in Baytown, for more than 18 years. She received the Excellence in Teaching award at Lee in 1989, and she has chaired the Visual and Performing Arts Division there since 1994. In addition, she served as president of the Baytown Junior Chamber of Commerce in the mid-1990s.
Sheley's work experience includes a stint as a reporter at the Baytown Sun, where she won two Associated Press awards. She also worked as a copy editor and design editor for the paper.
She holds a bachelor's degree from the Central Campus of the University of Houston and a master's from the University of Houston - Clear Lake. Sheley has also done graduate work in the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin.
Other community college advisers who have received the adviser of the year award during the past decade include Jean Cotten of Texarkana College (2000), John Neal of Brookhaven College (1998), Elaine Jackson of Angelina College (1996), Bettye Craddock of Kilgore College (1994) and Royce Ann Walker of San Jacinto College (1991).
The award, which has been presented annually since 1974, was officially named the Charles T. (Chuck) Choate Memorial Adviser of the Year award in 1987. Choate, who had been adviser of the student newspaper at Eastfield College, a community college in Mesquite, Texas, received the award posthumously that year.