COLFA award faculty for contributions to success

BY HAELEY CARPENTER

Editor-in-Chief

The College of Liberal and Fine Arts (COLFA) at Tarleton State University held their first Sate of the College on Feb. 24, 2025.

The cocktail hour started at 6 p.m. with the reception to follow. The cocktail hour gave guests a chance to mingle while a slideshow presenting major projects and accomplishments played on the big screens. 

During the dinner, COLFA Dean Dr. Emran El-Badawi opened up with a speech of welcome before jumping into past statistics and future plans for the college.

He thanked the people that made this happen, highlighting certain faculty and staff members including past deans, department heads, associate deans and even students who contributed to the success of the college.

El-Badawi mentioned the Day at the Capitol where students and staff traveled to Austin to campaign for our university. University President Dr. James Hurley advocated for House Bill 125 which supports the start of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, which has been filed.

Dr. El-Badawi then touched on demographics like gender. COLFA is sitting at 51% female and 49% male.

Continuing with demographics, El-Badawi announced that his goal was to turn COLFA into a Hispanic Serving Institution. The college is sitting at almost 30% hispanic students, a steady growth over the last years.

Dr. El-Badawi explained fiscal years, how much money the college is making and how much goes to faculty in salaries. In the academic year 2022-2023, COLFA  (made/brought in/?) $235,000. Last year, academic year 2023-2024, COLFA (made/brought in/?) $257,000. 

This year, so far, we are sitting at $144,000 and the year is not finished yet.

The last thing El-Badawi mentioned before moving onto the faculty awards was the goal of research. He mentioned universities around the nation and in Texas, pushing the point of Tarleton research and being competitive.

Dr. El-Badawi introduced Associate Dean Dr. Ben Sword to present the college level awards of faculty excellence.

The first award of the night was the Barry B. Thompson Service award and was presented to Kelli Styron. Her efforts to remove barriers for student success is honorable and her mentoring program improved retention rates and has been used by other academic colleges.

The next winner was  Dr. Katherine Brown for the O.A. Grant Excellence for Teaching Award   .

Stan Korotchenko received the award for Outstanding Early Career Faculty Award. He was published in two top publications: The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

The next award was the Faculty Excellence in Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity Award and went to Dr. Tara Shelley. Dr. Shelley is the director for the Institute for Violence Against Women and Human Trafficking and works with One Safe Place and works with law enforcement and community organizations across Texas.

Austin Lewter was awarded the COLFA Faculty Excellence Award. Lewter works at no limits to set his students up for success whether it be through traveling across the country for networking trips or giving them experiences they need to round out their education at Tarleton.

The Engaged Faculty Award was given to Dan Stone. He focuses on community engaged theater and theater for social awareness, proving his dedication to storytelling and making voices heard.

Dr. Alex del Carmen was recognized as Texas A&M System Regents Professional for the 23-24 academic year. Dr. del Carmen transformed the Tarleton criminal justice program through leadership and scholarly excellence, pushing it towards the first doctoral program of the university.

Dr. El-Badawi reflects on the winners tonight and how successful COLFA has become.

“I'm actually quite humbled, because I feel that I feel almost undeserving of how successful they are at a time when Tarleton is changing so rapidly,” Dr. El-Badawi said. “I've never had to do that in such a changing environment. So I am actually doubly impressed by everything.”

The growth is rapid and with big plans for the future his thoughts on growth are careful.

“We can't move too fast and burn ourselves out and make big mistakes, but we can pace ourselves and grow no matter what,” Dr. El-Badawi said. “ Now, you know, striking that balance is challenging… and my job is to use the resources that he gives me to do the best that I can. So I see that as sort of the yin and yang.”

Even though this is a tight rope to walk, he is confident in the college.

“(Our success) speaks to our capability to adapt and to evolve quickly and skillfully in a highly competitive environment. And because our college is highly interdisciplinary, we are particularly well poised to meet the needs of our current and future job market,” Dr. El-Badawi said.

Dr. El-Badawi rounded out the night talking about his goals for the college.

The first was boosting national prominence. Dr. El-Badawi pushed that the college should never stop promoting itself and all the good it’s doing. The more the name gets out there, the better it will be in return.

The second was increasing research activities. Dr. El-Badawi mentioned specifically “Research, scholarship and creative activity.” The college plans to do this by hiring an associate dean of research and expanding the reach and resources to support itself.

The third was fostering graduate studies. His intention is to start supporting those programs more specifically.

Dr. El-Badawi suggested everyone to keep recruiting strategically, being creative about it and finding areas for growth. He calls the different areas that the college covers “an embarrassment of riches” and is humbled to have the job he does.

The last thing he mentioned was a call to action for faculty members to apply for more research funding because the more people apply the more likely they are to receive something. He let everyone know that if they had issues or needed more support to apply for funding that they are not alone.

Dr. El-Badawi thanked everyone for coming, congratulated the winners again and closed out the night.