Academics
The annual award is given by the Student Government Association after a nomination process open to students. This year, there were more than 40 nominations and the selection process was difficult, officers said.
In photo, from left: Professor Lynn Murray (Business), Professor Phil Harries (Biology), and Professor Christine Brodsky (Biology).
Murray is both the associate dean and an associate professor of marketing, teaching courses like Personal Selling and Sales Management, Sports Marketing, and Marketing Strategy, and serving as the advisor for an organization she founded, Women@Work.
With her guidance and support, the organization earned the Horizon Award in 2023 and the Organization of the Year in 2024; its membership continues to grow annually.
Students say she fosters meaningful relationships with her students, creating a shared trust and respect that leads to better learning and personal growth.
“She understands our needs and strengths and always gives 100 percent to help us succeed inside and outside the classroom,” said Carmen Kent in her nomination. “She has always made me feel like she believes in me and that I am capable of anything I put my mind to.”
Students also describe her as a role model and a teacher who has an open-door policy.
She earned a BBA in Marketing and her MBA from Pitt State, and a doctorate in Marketing from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has worked in the hospitality industry and in sales as an advertising representative, a college admissions counselor, and a human resources recruiter.
In her teaching, she guides students in preparing proposals for non-profit and for-profit clients, including downtown businesses, and in developing marketing plans for new-to-market products and services.
Brodsky, an associate professor, carries a course load that includes Ecology, Field Biology Orientation, Urban Ecology, Mammalogy, and Animal Behavior, and she serves as a faculty mentor in the K-INBRE program – the Kansas Idea Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, a federally-funded effort to enhance biomedical research and training.
She earned her BS at the University of Massachusetts, her MS at the University of Delaware, and her Doctorate at the University of Missouri.
For several years, Brodsky has advised a team of students in a project for the Smithsonian Institution called “Snapshot USA.” They collect data throughout the Pittsburg area using mounted digital cameras to help paint a picture of the diversity of mammal life across the U.S. Those photos – now numbering tens of thousands – have become part of the national wildlife database, Wildlife Insights.
Students say she has a contagious energy that motivates all of her students to learn in a fun and innovative way, finding methods for them to retain information that doesn’t always involve standardized tests.
“She helps us recognize our potential,” said Jordan Haworth. “She was the one who motivated me to start a passion project about the abundance and behavioral aspects of freshwater mussels. I am working on getting a paper published about my research on aquatic life and she has put in overtime hours helping me succeed.”
Harries, a professor, teaches a course load that includes Principles of Biology, Cell Biology, General Biology, Advanced Cellular and Molecular Biology, and was a course developer for Biology of Cancer. He advises Pre-Med students and was one of the two developers of the newly launched AMP-Up program in partnership with Kansas City University Medical and Dental school.
He earned his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Students say he is positive, makes students feel welcome in his classroom, and makes them feel that they will be able to succeed.
Toward the end of her freshman year, one of his students was overwhelmed with anxiety and depression and questioned her choice to pursue a Biology degree with an emphasis in Pre-Medicine. She returned home for a week to sort things out and emailed Harries to let him know she was unable to take a test.
“He responded with words you don’t expect college professors to respond with,” she wrote in her nomination. “Instead of addressing the test, he told me to take as much time as I needed and reach out to him when I was back in town. He offered me time to prepare. He saved me in a way I don’t think he realized. Instead of belittling me, he validated my feelings and helped me come up with a different plan to finish what I needed for the rest of the semester.”
