CAPS Faculty Win NMU Awards

Chuck Ganzert using NMU-issued laptop computers to video conference with our student interns at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Three Communication and Performance Studies faculty won university-wide honors in 2008.  Each year, the NMU community nominates individuals to be recognized for outstanding contributions in the areas of teaching and scholarship, as well as those who have achieved distinction across the range of activities professors engage.  This is the first time in Northern’s history that so many of these coveted awards have been given to one department in a single year.

In the spring, Dr. Dwight J. Brady received the 2008 Distinguished Faculty Award at Northern Michigan University.  Since joining the NMU faculty, Dwight has taught no less than nine different courses in the CAPS Department, including everything from introductory to upper-level sections.  His classes are quite challenging as he consistently updates the curricula to keep students abreast of technological and theoretical developments. He has consistently attended conferences in order to master the ever changing technological developments in video production precisely to better both his students and his own professional work.  His scholarship involves actual media production and he has six major audio or video productions under his belt, regularly including undergraduate students in such endeavors.  His lengthier documentary projects on the Gray Wolf, the U.P. 200, and Michigan’s “Green Energy Economy” are notable for both their quality and the fact that they have received major awards from the Michigan Association of Broadcasters as well as an Emmy Award in 2007.  Furthermore, Professor Brady clearly exemplifies the way in which faculty should engage their school and community.  He has chaired each of the committees in the CAPS Department, has served on the Academic Senate and the Faculty Grants Committee with distinction, and accepted Governor Granholm’s invitation to sit on the Michigan Climate Action Council which serves as the hydraulic piston powering significant economic changes on the state’s horizon.   Dwight joins the company of James Panowski (1994), Louise Bourgault, (2000), and James Cantrill (2001), each of whom previously won a Distinguished Faculty Award at NMU as a member of the CAPS family.

Dr. Louise M. Bourgault received the 2008 Excellence in Scholarship award for her work in the area of African Media and popular culture responses to the AIDS crisis.  She has written two books, one of which was the recipient of the prestigious Choice Book Award.  She is also the author of over 80 scholarly publications conference papers.  The winner of a Fulbright Regional Research Award for AIDS-related research in Africa, Louise is a well-traveled media consultant having served as Scholar in Residence at three international universities, in South Africa, in Malaysia, and in France.  In addition, since coming to Northern Michigan University in 1984, she has been a recipient of the NMU Peter White Scholar Award and six Faculty Research Grants, and has developed with NMU students several multi-media packages that include concerts with African performers that have come to the University to share their talents.  Professor Bourgault has also found the time to produced two documentaries, one of which was recognized by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. 

Dr. Charles F. Ganzert has taught at NMU since 1992 and was awarded and Excellence in Teaching Award this fall.  He is known as a caring and dedicated instructor, an eagerly sought-out advisor, and a professional who thoroughly understands the nature of audio and music recording.  His students have won awards for excellence in broadcast production from the Michigan Association of Broadcasters in each of the last 15 years requiring him to devote hundreds of hours of on hands on instruction enabling his students to capture and edit material.  Over the years, he has single handedly garnered close to $300,000 in grant funding to keep his department’s academic studios at the cutting edge of technology.  Because Chuck has been deeply committed to teaching the practice of broadcasting, he now coordinates academic service learning for the entire NMU community.  And, through it all, he has found the time to serve as the academic advisor for NMU’s student radio station,  as well as supervise more than a quarter of the internships in his discipline.  Chuck shares the Excellence in Teaching Award at Northern with fellow CAPS professor Wally Niebauer, who was the very first honoree for the award in 2004.