Contact: Sammy McDavid
Benjamin Blaney
A Mississippi State foreign languages professor is receiving national recognition for his skills in advising students.
Benjamin Blaney recently was selected for a 2000 National Academic Advising Association Certificate of Merit. He is among 28 who will travel in October to the association's annual awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla.
Nearly 60 persons were considered this year for top advising honors. Alabama-Birmingham, Illinois State, Minnesota, Texas A&M, and Oregon State are among other universities with 2000 certificate of merit winners.
The advising association, along with American College Tests Inc., established the national recognition program in 1983 "to honor individuals making significant contributions to the improvement of academic advising."
MSU has produced a number of honorees in recent years. The most recent, curriculum and instruction professor R. Dwight Hare, was among 24 receiving 1999 certificates of merit.
Based at Kansas State University, the association has some 5,000 members. In addition to faculty members, the organization represents professional advisers, administrators, counselors, and others in academic and student affairs concerned with the intellectual, personal and vocational needs of students.
Blaney, a member of the MSU faculty since 1972, previously was honored at MSU with a Burlington-Northern Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching, John Grisham Master Teacher Award and a Schillig Special Teaching Project Grant. He also received the Mississippi Foreign Language Association's 1997 Distinguished Service Award.
A teacher of German, he holds a bachelor's degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, a master's from Middlebury (Vt.) College and a doctorate from the University of Colorado.