More than 200 Whittier College students were honored for their academic achievements at this year’s Honors Convocation ceremony held at the Ruth B. Shannon Center for the Performing Arts. The event acknowledged undergraduate fellowships recipients, academic achievement awards, scholar athlete awards, and departmental awards, as well as service and leadership awards. Click here to see the full list of awardees. To see more photos, visit our Facebook page.
During the ceremony, Associate Professor of Applied Psychology Christina L. Scott was presented with the 2018 Harry W. Nerhood Teaching Excellence Award. Named for Professor Emeritus of History Harry W. Nerhood, the award recognizes overall excellence in teaching. Scott’s research focuses primarily on women’s sexuality. Scott works with three to four undergraduate research assistants each year–serving as both an instructor and mentor. She has published in a wide range of books and journals and she continues to speak nationally and internationally about her research.
2017 Nerhood Awardee and Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Nutrition Science Kathy Barlow served as the keynote speaker for the ceremony. In her speech, 37 Words, Barlow described the impact Title IX of the Educational Amendments has had on women in higher education.
Barlow shared her own story of trying out for a baseball team when she was in the third grade. “I can’t tell you how excited I was that Saturday morning as I rode with my daddy to the park talking about baseball and how much fun it was going to be playing on a team, and daddy telling me I was a natural at third base,” said Barlow in her speech. She continued to explain how she was rejected from the team simply because she was a girl. “What I learned that day was that even though girls were just as good as boys in sports, grownups had decided that girls could not be part of the American pastime.”
Years later, the passing of Title IX would give rise to gender equality throughout college campuses.
“Last year there were over 3 million high school girls participating in athletics compared to the 295,000 in 1972,” said Barlow in her speech. “College women athlete numbers have also increased from the 30,000 in 1972 to over 400,000 in 2014 with 39.6 percent of the total athletic budget going to women where in 1972, they received only 2 percent of the budget.”
Barlow is the director of the sport management emphasis in KNS and teaches methods courses for elementary and adapted physical education. She is a member of the board of the Excellence Through Exercise Foundation. Click here to read her full speech.
