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The Emerging Leader Award recognizes faculty who have assumed leadership roles within the last five years and who exemplify ¹ú²ú×ÔÅÄ's commitment to shared governance and effective leadership. These awards were announced at Convocation in fall 2018.

Dee Gillespie, Associate Professor of History, serves as the Departmental Assessment Coordinator, assisting with application processes and aligning academic goals with learning outcomes and assessments. Furthermore, she is an organizer of ¹ú²ú×ÔÅÄ's Civil War lecture series, and the Chair of the department's Gateway to Completion (G2C) committee, the USG's initiative to examine and redesign certain gateway courses. In June 2018, Dr. Gillespie recorded an interview for TV18, Gainesville and Hall County's public access channel. This year marks Hall County's bicentennial, and TV18 is celebrating with a series of videos about Hall County history. They invited Dr. Gillespie to participate based on her research into the history of Buford Dam and creation of Lake Lanier, as well as her work with ¹ú²ú×ÔÅÄ students to record original oral history interviews with local residents.

Victoria Hightower, Associate Professor of History, serves as the Assistant Director of Nationally Competitive Scholarships and mentors students through the complex process of applying for the highly competitive scholarships. Dr. Hightower is Membership Secretary (2010-present) for the and co-advises Phi Alpha Theta, the history honors society. She developed a multilingual World Civilization survey course (HIST 1112) to be taught to Arabic language majors for whom at least fifty percent of all content will be presented in Arabic.

April Nelms serves as Department Head of Teacher Education and Coordinator of the College of Education–Science Education programs. A successful grant writer, she has formed a community of practice to supports faculty in applying for external sources of funding. In 2017, Dr. Nelms received a $12,800 Affordable Learning Grant for Authoritative Science Publications for Education Majors (ASPEM) with her colleagues Sanghee Choi, Max Dominguez, Donna Governor, and David Osmond. Dr. Nelms, along with Sanghee Choi and Mark Spraker, successfully applied for a grant to support the education of pre-service secondary STEM teachers.