National Mentoring Award Goes to Ovando

Dr. Martha Ovando, a professor in The University of Texas at Austin College of Education’s Department of Educational Administration, was honored in October with the University Center for Educational Administration’s (UCEA) 2010 Jay D. Scribner Mentoring Award.

The Scribner Mentoring Award recognizes educational leadership faculty who have made substantial contributions to the field by mentoring the next generation of students into roles as university research professors, as well as supporting and advising junior faculty. The award is named after Dr. Jay D. Scribner, whose prolific career spanned over four decades and who has mentored a host of doctoral students into the profession while also advising and supporting countless junior professors. Over the years Scribner has developed a reputation for his exceptional ability to reach across racial, class and gender differences in his mentoring, nurturing scholars from under-represented backgrounds into a profession that’s largely homogeneous in composition.

Scribner is professor emeritus in The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education.

Ovando’s work as a scholar has concentrated on understanding the processes related to the supervision of instruction and school personnel. This has included exploring the instructional needs of teachers and their professional development in higher education, analyzing approaches to in-service education as well as faculty needs, investigating the processes of instructional supervision, evaluating teachers, and exploring the post-observation processes used to improve instruction.

The award was presented to Ovando at this year’s UCEA convention in New Orleans. The UCEA is a national consortium of higher education institutions committed to advancing the preparation and practice of education leaders, and it’s housed in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Administration.

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910