ODU Professor Thomas Chapman Recipient of Teaching Award

December 02, 2013

Thomas Chapman

Old Dominion University professor Thomas Chapman was honored recently with the 2013 Excellence in Teaching Award from the SouthEastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG).

Chapman, an assistant professor of geography at ODU since 2009, received the award at the organization's annual meeting, held Nov. 24-26 in Roanoke, Va.

The SEDAAG award acknowledges Chapman's sustained excellence and creativity in teaching, as well as his exceptional commitment to effective geography teaching beyond the immediate classroom.

"This award is extra, extra special to me," Chapman said. "Several letters of support came in to SEDAAG from both my faculty peers at ODU and my students. Then, to discover that I was selected from a pool of more than 30 other highly distinguished geography faculty from other universities throughout the southern states was truly an honor."

According to the SEDAAG website, criteria for the newly established award include: exceptional commitment to effective geography teaching; a record of efforts to help diffuse excellent geography teaching beyond one's immediate classroom (teaching-related publications, workshops, websites, textbooks, etc.); recognition of teaching excellence by department, school or other organizations; and support of teaching excellence via student evaluations or comments.

SEDAAG, which was established in 1947, is a regional subdivision of the Association of American Geographers.

The organization, representing more than 550 members in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, works to advance investigations in geography and to encourage the application of geographic findings in education, government and business.