The Global Leadership Awards Program is an annual award to recognize students, faculty, and staff who have made a significant contribution to advance global learning at Appalachian. This award recognizes extraordinary contributions of students, faculty and staff who have initiated, developed and/or supported opportunities for global learning.
Faculty Award: Dr. Beverly Moser
This year’s recipient of the Global Leadership Award for Faculty could be given the award based solely on what is listed on the first page of her CV. Nonetheless, she has personified Global Leadership throughout her career, making Dr. Beverly Moser the 2017 Appalachian Global Leader. Dr. Moser is an accomplished linguist and scholar/educator serving as the Program Director for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of Languages, Literature and Foreign Cultures. The combination of her pursuit of externally funded grants and leadership in globalization activities on campus and in the community have resulted in a myriad of global learning opportunities for Appalachian students, and for scholars across the world. From the development of a service learning course that brought the German language and culture to 88 4th graders at Hardin Park school, to securing hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. Department of State grants for projects to support global learning on our campus, Dr. Moser has devoted her career to the most significant components in our Quality Enhancement Program and in our continued work towards internationalization.
In 2004, Dr. Moser represented Appalachian State in a delegation from the university of North Carolina system to the Baden-Wurrtemberg State-to-State exchange in Mannheim, Germany. In 2005, she hosted administrators from Karlsruhe Education University, and again in 2017. In 2006, Dr. Moser was quite busy leading German immersion weekends she had branded and begun as an assistant professor in 1997, helping Appalachian students intensify their language studies with 24 hour immersion experiences, eventually providing faculty development for professors and graduate students in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French and Spanish! In 2007, the flourishing Dr. Moser directed the Foreign Langauge Assistance Program through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to bring foreign languages to rural Burke County. The grant funds totaled $477 thousand dollars, with a total budget of more than 1 million dollars over a 3 year period. Added to this amazing project, in 2007 and 2008, she collaborated with colleagues to secure federal funds for the Fulbright Pakastani Science Educator’s Program for English as a second language training. By the time she and collaborators proposed the Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program for English as a second language training for teachers around the world in 2011-14, she had added numerous publications, presentations and additional grant projects to her list of activities.
Dr. Moser’s leadership in international, regional and campus communities continued, all while directing projects and providing in-service activities for teachers in the American Association of Teaching German, presenting at conferences and helping to support the QEP, including coordinating the 4th hour of instruction in the five languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, German and Russian. The countless hours, days and years of work invested in Global learning at and beyond Appalachian State University makes me very proud to congratulate the 2017 Global Leader, Dr. Beverly Moser.
Undergraduate Student Award: Paige Anderholm
Paige came to Appalachian having never ventured beyond the borders of the United States. After a few weeks, however, Paige discovered an intense interest in global affairs, which led her to major in International Relations and Comparative Politics. Paige’s journey in becoming a global leader took her abroad, first to Cuba, then to Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, and back to Cuba for a second time. In Cuba, Paige was a scholar researching issues of community engagement and economic insecurity; in Mauritius, she worked on a marine conservation project for two months; in Mexico and Peru, she represented Appalachian’s AISEC program at Pan-American conferences devoted to promoting international exchanges. But Paige did not stop there: Not content with going abroad herself, she decided to help others do the same by joining, and eventually becoming Vice President of, AISEC, the international non-profit leadership program developed and run by students. During her time at AISEC, Paige helped to send at least ninety-four Appalachian students abroad, to volunteer and do internships. This required her to interview, evaluate, select, train, and prepare (and also calm the fears of) a wide variety of her peers, all within the last two years. In short, her nominator said he is deeply impressed with Paige Anderholm. "She is a Global Citizen, to be sure, but she is much more: she is a Global Citizen who helps others become Global Citizens—on our campus and abroad. She is a student who has successfully integrated Global Learning’s many threads into a coherent whole, to the benefit of herself and the campus community."
Graduate Student Award: Morgan Prince
Morgan earned his BA in French and Music at Appalachian in 2016 and in 2017 was a graduate student in the Masters in Romance Languages (French). He is the Manager of the Language Acquisition Resource Center; he currently leads three weekly one-hour conversation sections for students in French 1040 and 1050; and he is working with the TEA Fellows, a group of teachers from around the world who come to hone their skills as teachers. On top of all of these responsibilities and his classes, Morgan still finds time to attend every language-learning conference imaginable. His nominator states, even before he began teaching, Morgan acted as a leader in global education at Appalachian. He designed games and activities for my students and promoted a campus-wide awareness of technology tools available for language learners. He delivered presentations on this topic at our Tech4Teach conference on campus, as well as at the Southern Conference on Language Teaching in Charlotte. Now, he continues this work in a more official capacity as the Manager of the Language Acquisition Resource Center. Additionally, Morgan is constantly making connections with global education leaders off campus and bringing their perspectives and expertise back to Boone. For instance, he attended a workshop at the French Embassy in Charlotte on how to help non-native speakers of French develop oral proficiency in the classroom. He then applied this knowledge as the leader of weekly conversation sections for students of FRE 1040 and 1050. Finally, Morgan has demonstrated an impressive commitment to promoting language learning outside of the classroom. He advanced extremely rapidly through his curriculum because he supplemented his studies with French movies, communicated with pen pals, babysat French kids, and actively pursued every opportunity to interact with native speakers. Through his engagement with the French-speaking world, he became a global citizen. By sharing his experiences with his classmates, he helps them realize how global learning can enrich their experiences of the world—even before they have the chance to travel abroad. Though he is just starting his career as an educator, he has already impacted the skills and perspectives of a large number of students in profoundly significant ways.