The College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences is proud to announce the 2016 Educators Hall of Honor honorees. These honorees were celebrated on March 31, 2016 in an event at the Crowne Plaza, emceed by UT’s Bob Kesling, director of broadcasting for UT Athletics.
This year’s honorees include:
- David Madden, a UT graduate, novelist, and Civil War historian. He served in the US Army and later earned a master’s from San Francisco State University. He attended the Yale School of Drama on a prestigious John Golden Fellowship. Madden’s career began at Louisiana State University as a writer in residence, then director of the creative writing program and now the Robert Penn Warren Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing. He is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated and award-winning writer with hundreds of published novels, poems, short stories, and essays.
- Bill McKee, a UT graduate and higher education administrator. McKee is vice president for academic affairs at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, where he has served for thirty-seven years as professor, dean, and student mentor. He teaches graduate courses in public service, professional communications, and public policy. As a volunteer, he devotes time to a variety of governmental and not-for-profit agencies and organizations, including the dean’s advisory board in UT’s College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.
- David Northington, a professor of piano at UT. Following Northington’s debut recital at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, the New York Times called him “an immensely gifted musician.” Such accolades have followed him around the world. After a thirty-nine-year career in UT’s School of Music, he performed his last faculty concert March 6 and will retire at the end of the semester. His many teaching awards include the Tennessee Music Teachers Association Teacher of the Year award, the Tennessee Governor’s School of the Arts Outstanding Teacher award and the Tennessee Arts Commission Artist of the Year award. He will travel to Germany, Italy, and China this year to participate in international music festivals.
- Elinor “Pat” Payne, a UT graduate and music educator. Payne spent thirty-five years as a music teacher for Knox County Schools. She developed lesson plans with a fresh approach to choral music, instruments, and dance and also produced music programs, plays, and academic enrichment programs. Her accomplishments include serving on music textbook selection committees, developing after-school enrichment programs, serving on the Knox County Schools music advisory committee, conducting student teaching programs, and chairing the Retired Teachers Association. Former students include Josh Lovelace, pianist for the Grammy-nominated band Needtobreathe, and UT Women’s Head Basketball Coach Holly Warlick.
- Tom Rakes, a UT graduate and former chancellor of UT Martin. Rakes’s first position as an educator was in Johnson City, Tennessee, as a teacher and basketball coach. Rakes has completed an extensive list of scholarly activities, including more than 160 referred presentations and publications. He has been associated with 11 training programs developed for businesses or nonprofit organizations operating in six states. In 2010, he was given an honorary doctorate from Hirosoki University in Japan. He recently retired as the ninth chancellor of UT Martin and will return to the faculty.
- Marianne Woodside, professor emeritus of counselor education at UT Knoxville. She began her career as an elementary counselor but made the transition to higher education. In forty-one years as an educator, she has received dozens of local and national awards and honors, including UT’s Outstanding Teacher of University Studies. Woodside has published nearly thirty books and book chapters and more than sixty journal articles; served as editor, reviewer, and editorial board member for ten journals; presented more than 120 times at conferences worldwide; and secured more than twenty grants to support her students and research.
The hall praises professionals who already have established themselves in the field of education and helps students who one day will follow in their footsteps. It was founded in 2002 by C. Glennon Rowell, the late dean of the former College of Education, as a way to recognize deserving teachers and supplement the education of future students. The hall is open to any professional in the United States, and members have come from throughout Tennessee and the nation. Those honored have been teachers from elementary school to the college ranks.