Emporia State University has announced the recipient of its highest faculty recognition.
ESU art therapy professor Dr. Gaelynn Wolf Bordonaro has been named as the 2020 Roe R. Cross Professor. Dr. Bordonaro came to ESU back in 2005 and became the graduate art therapy department director back in 2006, a position she continues to hold to this day.
During her time at ESU, Dr. Bordonaro has been involved in multiple “cross-campus” collaborative efforts including with the ESU Department of Nursing and Department of Counselor Education where she helped establish a dual credit program allowing students to graduate with two master’s degrees in art therapy and either clinical counseling or clinical psychology. Dr. Bordonaro’s work has also gone far beyond the ESU campus including work with Communities Healing Through Art (CHART) on international trauma response efforts in Chile, Thailand, Indian, South Africa, China and the coastal United States.
Additionally, in 2010 Dr. Bordonaro, along with a group of ESU students, traveled to Port au Prince, Haiti, to work with children survivors of the devastating 2010 earthquake.
In a Zoom meeting Thursday, ESU Provost David Cordle stated, “To be selected as the Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor, a faculty member has to excel at every aspect of faculty work. They have to be an excellent teacher, a recognized researcher, and a proven leader. Dr. Wolf-Bordonaro meets those standards and then some.”
Dr. Bordonaro responded to the honor calling it a “surreal and wonderful surprise.”
The Roe Cross Distinguished Professor Award has been in place since 1979. It goes to the professor who best demonstrates several attributes, including teaching excellence, professional activities, fostering of intellectual atmosphere, service to ESU outside the classroom and status as a student mentor.
