2007 Outstanding Faculty: Tysha Potter, Mark Peterson and Brenda Letendre

2007 PSU Outstanding Faculty

Where do great teachers come from? Visit with this year’s Outstanding Faculty Award winners at Pittsburg State University and you could conclude they come from a variety of places. For Brenda Letendre, who plans to retire this year after 36 years in education, “Teaching was a way you could fulfill yourself as a woman.” Letendre is an associate professor in the Special Services and Leadership Studies Department in Pittsburg State’s College of Education. “And it was fulfilling,” she added.

For Tysha Potter, a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychology and Counseling, teaching was a matter of “serendipity” although she came from a family of teachers with strong ties to Pittsburg State University.

“I really didn’t plan on being a teacher,” Potter recalled. “A position opened up that was temporary.” Potter said she loved it from the start.

For Mark Peterson, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences, higher education was the family business.

“Both my parents were university teachers,” Peterson said, “so I could see how important it was.”

However they came to the profession, this year’s PSU Outstanding Faculty agree on the satisfaction they get from teaching.

“This is the most fulfilling career,” Peterson said. “I have an opportunity to change people’s lives – to encourage students to feel the same excitement I feel with ideas.”

“My students breathe life into me,” Potter added. “I like knowing I can make a difference. I’m blessed.”

Letendre quoted a quote from t-shirts many teachers wear, “I teach, I touch the future.”

“As a teacher, you can touch so many more lives,” Letendre said. And because she teaches teachers and school administrators, Letendre can see those ripples touching generations of students still to come.

The Outstanding Faculty Award is presented annually at the Apple Day convocation by the PSU Student Government Association. A student committee selects the winners from a list of nominees submitted by students.

---Pitt State---