Anastasia Pratt Receives Chancellors Award for Excellence in Faculty Service

‌Anastasia Pratt, an assistant professor of Historical Studies with the college’s Plattsburgh region, was recognized with a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service at SUNY Empire State College’s June 11, 2016, commencement event at Albany. Pratt is considered by her colleagues to be a leader among the SUNY Empire faculty in providing extraordinary service to the School of Graduate Studies and to college governance in the key areas of undergraduate studies academic policy study, recommendations and policy approval.

“SUNY employs an exemplary body of faculty and staff across the state, and the annual presentation of these awards underscores our deep appreciation for those who serve SUNY campuses, students and communities with the highest levels of distinction,” said Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher. “Congratulations to all of this year’s honorees.”

Recognizing the SUNY Chancellor’s Award winners during the ceremony, President Merodie A. Hancock said, “By Chancellor’s Awards winners, that means they won awards competing with all of their SUNY colleagues, not just within Empire State College. I commend Dr. Pratt for her service to the college and to its students.”

“I am both humbled and honored by this award, which is only possible because my colleagues at Empire State College have trusted me to serve our students and to represent them,” said Pratt.

About Anastasia Pratt

As a full-time faculty member at SUNY Empire State College since 2011, and part time since 2007, Pratt mentors undergraduate students across the disciplines and teaches undergraduate students in the fields of American art, culture, history and public history. 

Pratt also serves as the coordinator for the Advanced Certificate in Public History, offered through the college’s School for Graduate Studies, Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program. She has taken the lead with other faculty developing five online and project-based graduate courses specifically for the graduate certificate program. A second Advanced Certificate in Heritage Preservation, with four new and unique theory- and practice-based studies, was developed more recently, also under the leadership of Pratt. In addition, she developed an informational program website. This significant service to the college in terms of graduate program development goes above and beyond the expectations for full-time faculty, as she also mentors more than 40 graduate advisees.

Pratt serves as the Clinton County historian, a position she has held in conjunction with her work at Empire State College since 2008. In this position, she not only acquires, catalogs and maintains archival documents and artifacts, through which the public can research the history of New York, she also develops public history teaching exhibits locally and places Empire State College and other graduate and undergraduate students in project internships at historical societies across New York state through her networks of public history professionals. She also has published scholarship and presented at national conferences on her teaching, mentoring and public history research interests, which all serve to bring positive attention and recognition to SUNY Empire State College as a higher education institution that produces knowledge and fosters active, experiential learning opportunities.

Pratt also serves the college community through her active leadership in shared college governance. Pratt has co-chaired the governance Committee on Undergraduate Studies and Policies since 2012.

About the Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence

The awards are presented annually in seven categories: Faculty Service, Librarianship, Professional Service, Scholarship and Creative Activities, Teaching, Classified Service and Adjunct Teaching. The Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are system-level honors conferred to acknowledge and provide systemwide recognition for consistently superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence. Individuals selected for this honor are role models within the SUNY community. In acknowledgment of their selection, recipients are given recognition for the particular award received in the college catalog. A certificate and a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence Medallion also are bestowed to commemorate selection.

About Empire State College

Empire State College, the nontraditional, open college of the SUNY system, educates more than 20,000 students worldwide at eight international sites, more than 35 locations across New York, online, as well as face to face and through a blend of both, at the associate, bachelor’s and master’s levels.

The average age of an undergraduate student at the college is 35, and graduate students’ average age is 40. Most Empire State College students are working adults. Many are raising families and meeting civic commitments in the communities where they live, while studying part time. In addition to awarding credit for prior college-level learning, the college pairs each undergraduate student with a faculty mentor who supports that student throughout his or her college career.

Working with their mentors, students design an individual degree program and engage in guided independent study and course work onsite, online or through a combination of both, which provides the flexibility for students to choose where, when and how to learn. Students have the opportunity to enroll five times during the year.

The college’s more than 75,000 alumni are active in their communities as entrepreneurs, politicians, business professionals, artists, nonprofit agency employees, teachers, veterans and active military, union members and more. The college was first established in 1971 by the SUNY Board of Trustees with the encouragement of the late Ernest L. Boyer, chancellor of the SUNY system from 1970 to 1977. Boyer also served as United States commissioner of education during the administration of President Jimmy Carter and then as president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

More information about the college is available at www.esc.edu.

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Media contact: David Henahan, director of communications

518-587-2100, ext. 2918

David.Henahan@esc.edu

518-321-7038 (after hours and on weekends)