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Honors and Awards

LC Faculty Honors

  • Coaching legend Dr. Jack Toms '69 was one of six coaches to be inducted into the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's (USTFCCCA) Hall of Fame in December 2010. The mentor of the LC track and cross country teams for the last thirty-one years, Toms has retired from active coaching but remains the director of athletics.
  • Men's Soccer Coach Chris Yeager was named the national NCAA Division III Coach of the Year by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America after taking his unranked team all the way to the 2010 championship game in San Antonio, Texas. No Lynchburg College team has ever gone so far in tournament play, and Yeager was the first LC coach to be named a national coach of the year.
  • President Kenneth Garren served as the only Division III president on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) panel in January 2011 in San Antonio, Texas, to talk about the need for strong leadership connecting academics and athletics. Dr. Garren also serves as one of seven elected Virginia commissioners with the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools (SACS).
  • During the 2010 Winter Olympics and World Cup, Dr. Eric Goff, associate professor of physics and chair of the physics department and author of Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports, was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and other media for his expertise on the physics of sports. Dr. Goff is currently working on a textbook on the physics of sports.
  • Dr. Brian Crim, assistant professor of history, was accepted for the 2011 Jack and Anita Hess Seminar for Faculty: "Teaching about the Holocaust through Eyewitness Testimony: Using Interviews and Memoirs in the Classroom," at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  • Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell appointed Dr. Dan Messerschmidt, professor of economics, to the Virginia Joint Advisory Board of Economists (JABE), which reviews the state's general economic climate, and provides a revenue outlook for the commonwealth.
  • Dr. Clifton W. Potter's book, Victorian Ambivalence About Elizabeth I: The Political History of a Royal Reputation, published by the Edwin Mellen Press (July 2010), was awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for its "distinguished contribution to scholarship" by the editorial board of Mellen Press.
  • Dr. Kimberly A. McCabe and Dr. Sabita Manian co-authored Sex Trafficking: A Global Perspective, a 2010 book that provides a general profile of the demographic characteristics and political conditions that support the growth of sex trafficking.

Faculty-Student Research Grants

  • Dr. John Styrsky, assistant professor of biology; Loriann Garcia '10 (Germantown, Md.); and Helen Wolfe '10 (Sterling, Va.) received funding from the Jeffress Memorial Trust of Virginia to research the never-before-studied symbiotic relationship among a Neotropical acacia, ant, and spider in Panama.
  • Dr. Nancy Cowden, associate professor of biology; Dr. Priscilla Gannicott, associate professor of chemistry; and Jennifer Thurman '10 (Roanoke, Va.) are the recipients of funding from the Perkin Fund, the American Orchid Society, the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges (VFIC), and Lynchburg College for research on how a local native orchid attracts pollinators.

Student Achievements

  • Alexandra Jadovich '12 of West Simsbury, Conn. and Justin Lincho '11 of Selma, N.C. won Outstanding Parliamentarian Awards at the Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation in Washington, D.C., in 2010.
  • A team of M.B.A. students in Dr. Maria Nathan's capstone course tied for No. 1 among 3,985 teams from 263 colleges and universities participating in a 2010 worldwide simulation called the Business Strategy Game.
  • Deane Flickinger '11 of Mechanicsville, Va., Paul Cole '12 of Vienna, Va., and Patrick Ferrer '12 of Charlotte, N.C. received scholarships to attend the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 50th Anniversary Symposium held in January 2011 at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
  • Ashley Schmidt '10 of Jarrettsville, Md. was one of 15 students selected from 300 applicants across the nation to be a History Scholar at the prestigious five-week program sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute in New York City. Samantha Bryant '11 of Lynchburg, Va. was one of 50 finalists selected for a one-week program at the institute.
  • The 2010 fall athletic season was the best in school history. The College ranked eighth in the Learfield Cup, representing the top Division III overall athletic programs nationwide; the field hockey team made it to the Sweet 16; the women's soccer team won a first-round contest in NCAA tournament play; and the men's cross country team placed 29th in the national meet.
  • Lynchburg College seniors performed 42 percent better than their peers at other four-year institutions in a Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) by the Council for Aid to Education over a four-year study period.