Don't forget that we'll be celebrating all of the award winners during our Region 2 Talks Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 21. For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/events/201906061107412/. And feel free to give these folks a shout-out using the #R2gratitude hashtag!
Karen B. Watson | Virginia Tech | Service to Region 2 Award
Karen Watson is the Director of Academic Support in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech (VT) and serves as the head academic advisor for the college. She has held this position for 23 years in two different colleges at VT. She is responsible for providing academic support to all students in the college with an emphasis on supporting probation and academic warning students, and those students having academic difficulty. In her role she also provides support to all of the academic advisors in the college. She directs the Advising Interest Group which has representation from all departments in the college and she coordinates academic advising for New Student Orientation.
Recently she has served as the academic advisor for the new Human Sciences and Pre-Education Undecided majors in the college and teaches their first-year experience class. She was a part of a study group several years ago which provided information that led to the development of the University’s first-year experience program. As the director she serves the students in her college through the awarding of all of their transfer credits and she serves all students at VT through the evaluation of all courses from elsewhere that find their home in one of 14 college departments. She works closely with the Registrar’s Office, Global Education Office and students studying abroad having their credit evaluated and authorizing their taking courses elsewhere.
Karen served as the Region 2 Virginia Liaison for 4 years. The Commonwealth of Virginia is the largest member of Region 2 and one of Karen’s work focused on making sure that all NACADA members from the Commonwealth had an opportunity to participate in some type of professional development program. While liaison she piloted the NACADA Drive-out model focusing on professional development opportunities for the Virginia Community College academic advisors in the rural southwestern area of the Commonwealth. While liaison she hosted the Virginia Drive-in conference on the Virginia Tech campus and provided guidance to two other schools in Virginia who hosted drive-in conferences. As a member of the steering committee for region 2 Karen advocated for handicapped accommodations at Region 2 meetings for the disabled. She encourage Region 2 conference planners to provide handicapped seating in concurrent sessions and to include in their promotional materials information for handicapped members and the accommodations available to them. Karen was dedicated to serving on the steering committee where meetings were held twice a year somewhere in the region. In her 4 years of serving on that committee she missed only one meeting in person even though it usually took her on average 4 to 6 hours to drive to the meetings.
Kelly Coldiron | Virginia Commonwealth University | Outstanding Advising Advocate Award
Kelly Coldiron served in a number of capacities at Virginia Commonwealth University over the course of her 30-plus year career, most recently serving as the Director of Student Services with the Division of Strategic Enrollment Management. Kelly is a firm believer that a little in-person guidance and a lot of empathy goes a long way in helping students have a successful enrollment and academic experience at VCU. She is a student advocate who is known widely for her diligent work with students from the start of their VCU experience until graduation. She is inspired by the network of colleagues across the university who consistently provide students with guidance and support as they pursue their academic goals. Kelly looks forward to continuing to lead change and innovation at VCU through her newly appointed role as Enrollment Experience Director with Strategic Enrollment Management.
Moira Curtis | University of Delaware | Region 2 Ambassador Scholarship
Moira Curtis currently serves as an Academic Advisor at the University of Delaware. She has been at the University since January of 2017 and works in the University Studies Program that serves the undeclared students. In addition to her role as Academic Advisor she also teaches two courses for the University, First Year Seminar and a course focused on major exploration. Before coming to the University of Delaware she worked at Montclair State University with both the undeclared students and those in the College of Education and Human Services. Moira earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity Washington University in D.C. and her Master of Arts in Counseling from Montclair State University.
Moira joined NACADA in 2016 and attended her first Region 2 conference in College Park that year. After attending the NACADA region 2 conference in Pittsburgh in 2017, Moira quickly got involved in the region by serving as the Technology Chair for the Region 2 conference in Dover in 2018 and then the Technology Co-Chair for the Region 2 conference in Atlantic City in 2019. She also has served as a mentor in the Region 2 mentoring program over this past year and in 2019 she served on the Delaware Drive-In conference committee as well. Moira is keeping her eyes open for the next opportunity to get involved within NACADA!
Emily Artello | Penn State Behrend | Region 2 Jeff Gardner Memorial Scholarship for Professional Development
Emily Artello has been an academic adviser at Penn State Behrend since 2005; she works with exploratory students, Education majors and Dual Enrollment students there. In her role, she also coordinates faculty adviser training for the campus. Within NACADA, Emily currently is a member of the Education Advising Community Steering Committee as well as the Summer Institute Steering Committee. She earned her B.A. in Political Science from Penn State and her Ed.M. in Higher Education from the University at Buffalo.
Margaret Eimers | Penn State Behrend | Region 2 Research Symposium Scholarship
Maggie Eimers is an academic adviser within the Division of Undergraduate Studies in the Academic and Career Planning Center (ACPC) at Penn State Behrend: currently working with students and colleagues in the School of Science, the College of Agricultural Sciences, the College of Health and Human Development, and the College of Nursing. She also currently serves as an adjunct lecturer of psychology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and previously served as a Career Counselor in the ACPC . Maggie is a proud Penn State alum (WE ARE!) of both World Campus for her M.Ed. in Higher Education with focus in student engagement and institutional research and Penn State Behrend for her B. S. in Psychology. Maggie’s advising philosophy is rooted in Astin’s I E O Model and Gorton’s Career Decision-Making Model. Her goal is to help students create a coherent plan based on their experiences and level of development, empowering them to make informed choices in academic planning holistically through their curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular endeavors.
Maggie joined NACADA in 2016 and since then has participated at the regional and national level. She enjoyed the NACADA Academic Advising Summer Institute in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 2017. There she and her team developed a professional development series for faculty advisers at Behrend to enhance their blended advising model. She co-presented at the 2019 Western Pennsylvania Drive-in with Carrie Egnosak, Dawn Coder, and Stephanie Vlajic on Leadership, Fear, and Positivity in advising. Maggie enjoys researching identifying factors of student success and evaluating effective programming to aid students in greater levels of persistence and success. During her time as a career counselor she began gathering data from the 2015 student cohort and plans to assess the effectiveness of advising practices in that cohort at the 2020 NACADA Research symposium in Chicago, Illinois.
Melissa Gallagher | La Salle University | Webinar Scholarship
Melissa Gallagher is the Assistant Director of the Center for Academic Achievement at La Salle University. Her work focuses on supporting students through overseeing and providing academic coaching and tutoring support services, participating in various student success and retention initiatives, and coordinating first-year advising services on campus. She also has served as a first-year Undecided Liberal Arts adviser. She earned her B.A. in English from Franklin & Marshall College and her M.S.Ed. in Reading/Writing/Literacy Education from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a NACADA member for two years and participated in the Region 2 Mentoring program as a mentee this past year.
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