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The head of Manchester College’s environmental studies program will accept an award as Indiana professor of the year in Washington, D.C., today.
Jerry Sweeten, who took his students on research trips to Alaska and Florida, was one of 38 teachers across the country to receive the national awards.
The honor was granted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a research and policy organization, and by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, a group that assists colleges with marketing and development. The organizations received about 300 applications for the awards.
Sweeten, 56, guides Manchester students in their studies of lake and stream ecology, endangered fish DNA, owl migration patterns, bird populations, honeybees and the RNA/DNA ratios of freshwater mussels.
“Dr. Sweeten links scholarship to active student research in a way that seems completely natural, even though it is a rare phenomenon,” Manchester President Jo Young Switzer said in a statement. “He exemplifies all that is good in United States undergraduate education.”
Before becoming a professor, Sweeten spent 27 years as director of the 160-acre Asherwood Environmental Center in Wabash County, according to the statement. He’s a passionate environmentalist and has raised more than $1 million in grants focused on the local environment, including funds for an effort to clean up a 30-mile stretch of Eel River.
He lives with his wife, Melinda, an education specialist, on the college’s 100-acre Koinonia Environmental and Retreat Center.
In 2004, Sweeten joined the biology faculty of Manchester, his alma mater. He earned a Ph.D. in aquatic biology from Purdue University and a master’s degree in natural resources with a teaching minor from Ball State University.
“This generation of students will face unprecedented environmental issues along with inevitable distribution of wealth, food, water and other natural resources,” Sweeten said in a statement.
“The world of tomorrow will not be the same as our world today. Students must be prepared to solve problems through knowledge, compassion for others, and a keen awareness of the life support systems of the Earth.”
Sweeten is the second Manchester professor to receive national acclaim. In 2002, Professor of Art Emeritus James R. C. Adams was named the 2002 U.S. professor of the year by the same two organizations.
This year’s national professor of the year will be announced today in Washington.
Manchester College, an independent college in North Manchester, has 1,223 students from 21 states and 20 countries.
