Faculty, Staff Lauded for Excellence with 2024 Chancellor’s Awards

Seven SUNY Plattsburgh faculty and staff members were honored with the 2023-2024 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence earlier this spring.

Cited for excellence in several areas of teaching and service, Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are State University system-wide honors given to acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for “consistently superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence,” according to SUNY.

“These programs underscore SUNY's commitment to sustaining intellectual vibrancy, advancing the boundaries of knowledge, providing the highest quality of instruction, and serving the public good. Through these awards, SUNY publicly proclaims its pride in the accomplishment and personal dedication of its instructional faculty, librarians and professional staff across its campuses.”

This year’s SUNY Plattsburgh are:

• Margarita Garcia-Notario: Excellence in adjunct teaching
• JoAnn Gleeson-Kreig: Excellence in professional service
• Michelle Ouellette: Excellence in faculty service
• Heidi Schnackenberg: Excellence in scholarship and creative activities
• Beth Shaughnessy: Excellence in classified service
• Michael Walters: Excellence in teaching
• Yong Yu: Excellence in teaching

Dr. Margarita Garcia Notario

Dr. Margarita Garcia Notario is an adjunct lecturer in modern languages and culture, having joined the faculty there in 2000. She earned both a master’s degree in theology and in philosophy from the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, and her doctorate in philosophy of education in part from the University of Navarra and the University of Complutense, Madrid, Spain.

Prior to arriving in Plattsburgh in the late 1990s, Garcia Notario was a teaching assistant and worked with children with special needs in Spain and was co-founder and headmaster of Bilingual School for Children in Madrid. In 1998, she taught middle school Spanish at St. John’s Academy in Plattsburgh prior to joining the faculty in modern languages and culture.

“I have been teaching at Plattsburgh for 23 years, which makes this college a prodigious and salutary part of my life,” she said. “I have always felt welcomed here, and supported, and challenged, and I have grown tremendously through the classes I have taught and taken.

“From my students’ feedback, my colleagues’ guidance and with administrators’ support, I have felt recognized and appreciated, even honored,” she said in her letter to the review committee. With training she was able to receive at SUNY Plattsburgh, Garcia Notario became one of the first faculty members to fully qualify to teach online courses. In addition, she has taught in the Honors Program and for the Cardinal Foundation Seminars.

“My formal education in Spain was deeply rooted in the classical Greeks, for whom ‘Paideia,’ or ‘the enlightening of the young,’ aimed at preparing individuals to excel intellectually, spiritually, morally and physically,” Garcia Notario said. “I would like for this award to mean that I am satisfying those expectations.

“But what I have learned through the labors of teaching is that a teacher is not the main ‘giver,’ but rather the ‘receiver.’ I am profoundly and sincerely grateful to my students and to our university for the innumerable opportunities they have afforded me in my own search for human excellence.”

Dr. JoAnn Gleeson-Kreig

Dr. JoAnn Gleeson-Kreig joined the faculty in nursing as an assistant professor in 1997, was promoted to associate professor in 2006 and full professor in 2011. Gleeson-Kreig has held a number of posts in nursing, including chair and coordinator for development of the masters in nursing. In 2015, she was appointed associate vice president for academic affairs.

As associate vice president, she acts as campus contact for SUNY System Administration as it relates to policy and curriculum, is accreditation liaison office for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, oversees academic advising, the Learning Center and registrar’s office, coordinates Cardinal Star, Watermark employee evaluation program and has administrative oversight for gen ed and the campus assessment program, among other duties.

Gleeson-Kreig earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Russell Sage College, her masters in adult health nursing from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, and her doctorate in nursing science from the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Gleeson-Kreig said receiving the award for excellence in professional service is in line with her life’s work.

“I am pleased to be honored with this award,” she said. “My entire career has been devoted to service. I have participated on or led numerous committees and ad hoc groups during my time at SUNY Plattsburgh. This work has been extremely rewarding in itself, and receiving added recognition is an added benefit.”

Michelle Ouellette

Michelle Ouellette began her SUNY Plattsburgh career as director of public relations and publications in the Office of Institutional Advancement in 2007. In 2014 she moved to academics when she was assistant professor of public relations in the Department of Journalism and Public Relations. She was promoted to associate professor in 2020.

Ouellette, who earned her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her master’s in education at the University of Albany, served as coordinator for the Institute for Ethics in Public Life during the summer and fall of 2021, and has taught or developed classes in social media for crisis response, public relations writing, principles, campaigns, honors courses and Cardinal Foundation Seminars.

She holds the 2018 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

“So many people at the college provide outstanding service on a day-to-day basis that I was flattered just to be nominated for this honor,” Ouellette said. “I am grateful to them and to all those who have supported me.”

Dr. Heidi Schnackenberg

Dr. Heidi Schnackenberg has been teaching in the School of Education, Health and Human Services since joining the faculty there as an associate professor in education in 2001. In 2010 she was promoted to full professor.

While on campus, Schnackenberg has served as interim chair of communication sciences and disorders as well as interim co-chair of counseling and human services. In education, she has served as chair and coordinator of the masters in education program from 2008 through 2023. She is currently co-chair of education.

Schnackenberg earned her bachelor’s degree in music from SUNY Potsdam and her doctorate in learning and instructional technology from Arizona State University in Tempe.

She said she felt humbled to be recognized for her scholarship.

“I am honored to receive the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. Being recognized for the research that I do with women in higher education leadership and academic motherhood is humbling,” Schnackenberg said. “I am grateful to all of the colleagues and students with whom I’ve published over the years and to SUNY Plattsburgh for acknowledging my work as part of the important body of scholarship at the university.”

Beth Shaughnessy

Beth Schaughnessy began her career at SUNY Plattsburgh in May 2002 working the overnight shift as a University Police dispatcher, answering the UP phone, blue light emergency and 911 calls, among the myriad duties of the desk. After a brief separation where she worked at the Clinton County Department of Social Services, Shaughnessy returned to SUNY Plattsburgh when a position opened in undergraduate admissions in 2004.

After 10 years in admissions, Shaughnessy joined the Department of Sport and Wellness as a keyboard specialist 2, later athletics and recreation as administrative assistant 1, where she works with student workers, greets the public, students and employees, assists the director and assistant director of athletics, tracks expenses and revenue for all athletic departmental and team accounts many other duties within the department.

“I am honored to receive the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Classified Service,” Shaughnessy said. “I enjoy working with many offices on campus to make sure our students have a great experience while they attend SUNY Plattsburgh.”

Dr. Michael Walters

Dr. Michael Walters has taught physics at SUNY Plattsburgh since serving as a visiting assistant professor in 2011. He joined the university as a full-time assistant professor the following year and was promoted to associate professor in 2017. He has served as chair of the department since January 2020.

In 2018 he launched the robotics bachelor’s degree, teaching everything from introduction to robotics to the robotics senior project and image processing, in addition to a wide assortment of physics and engineering classes. His undergraduate research topics include autonomous robotics such as those used in the NASA Robot Sample Retrieval Centennial Challenge, electrochemistry, small scale robotics, various microcontroller applications in robotics, and automated sorting system for card games, among many others.

Walters earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Utica College, his masters and doctorate in physics from Clarkson University in Potsdam.

“I am honored to receive this award, but I dedicate it to my students,” Walters says. “Without them and their honest feedback, I would not be the teacher I am today.

“They inspire and educate me on what it takes to build a learning community that is supportive and nurturing,” he said. “My students are amazing.”

Dr. Yong Yu

Dr. Yong Yu has been a member of the education faculty since joining campus as an assistant professor of literacy education in 2011, a position she held until her promotion to associate professor in 2017. At that time, she became chair of the undergraduate teacher education department. She served as chair for five years before returning to the ranks of the department.

Yu taught English at the South 10^th Street No. 1 Elementary School and served as an adjunct instructor of English in the foreign language department at Shenyang Teachers College, Shenyang, China in the early 1990s and continued to teach in Shenyang through 2006. At that time, she became a graduate and teaching assistant in the Department of Professional Studies in Education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate in 2011.

Yu earned her bachelor’s degree at Shenyang Teachers College and her master’s degree in English language and literature from Dalian Foreign Languages Institute in Dalian, China. She said the honor of receiving the Chancellor’s Award “is a reminder of the incredible colleagues I have had the privilege to work with and the campus environment that fosters growth and excellence.”

“It motivates me to push my boundaries and reach even greater heights,” Yu said.

— By Associate Director of Communication Gerianne Downs