Marcia Imbeau
April, 2012
Mentoring and Advising Award, 2011
Marcia Imbeau won the college’s award for mentoring and advising.
An associate professor of special education, Imbeau served on four doctoral advisory committees and chaired two doctoral committees in 2011. According to her nomination, Imbeau supported these students through one-on-one meetings to help them find their niche and interest for scholarly pursuit. She spent countless hours editing and providing feedback to guide them through the rigorous process for pursuing a doctorate. Imbeau also modeled scholarly contributions for her students by publishing books, reviewing manuscripts for journals and presenting research at national conferences.
Imbeau also advised 20 undergraduate students and 20 master’s students and was the sole advisor for the 29 childhood education majors in the college’s Honors Program. She assisted six honors students to develop proposals for theses and worked with three students to complete and present their final projects in order to achieve Cum Laude designation at this spring’s graduation. One of her advisees presented her research at the Arkansas Reading Association’s Conference in Little Rock.
She served on the college's Honors Council, chairing the Curriculum/Study Abroad Committee and the Inaugural COEHP Honors Research Symposium and Workshop Committee.
Imbeau helped to identify and involve other faculty members, matching their skills and interests with other Honors students in the thesis proposal stage. She received the Faculty Gold Medal Award last spring from the university’s Honors College for helping students obtain research funds through the State Undergraduate Research Fellowship program.
In one recommendation letter, a graduate student described Imbeau not just as an advisor, but also as an advocate and a role model.
"Dr. Imbeau also has the unusual skill of enabling a student to look at themselves where they are, assess their talents and weaknesses, and then allow them to grow from there," the student wrote.
Another student described Imbeau's practice of working each week with honors students, teaching them how to analyze and report data and making sure they were prepared to successfully defend their research.
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