CSC alumna receives teaching award in Wyoming
A graduate of Chadron State College and Dawes County native, Sharla Dowding, is one of 10 Wyoming teachers who received a 2008 Arch Coal Teacher Achievement Award. Dowding has taught science at Newcastle High School since 1997. This is the eighth year the Arch Coal Awards have been made in Wyoming. They include a $2,500 unrestricted cash prize, a trophy and a classroom plaque. Nominations of the teachers are made by the public. The selections are made by former recipients of the award.
Dowding grew up on a ranch in the Marsland area, where her parents, Buzz and Rosalene Tollman, reside. She is a graduate of Crawford High School and earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science education from Chadron State. She is working on a doctorate from Montana State University.
Her husband, Rod, is also a Crawford High graduate.
Dowding is serving a three-year term as the District XV director for the National Science Teachers Association. The district includes Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. She was a recipient of a national Radio Shack Tandy Teachers’ Award in 1999 and was selected as Wyoming’s Presidential High School Science Teacher of the Year for 2001.
Additionally, she has been the president of the Wyoming Science Teachers Association, co-chaired the state science teachers’ conference, volunteers as her school’s quiz bowl team and science Olympiad sponsor and is the director of the Regional Science Fair.
Dowding said she tries to incorporate technology into her labs, lectures and review sessions because it motivates the students.
“I feel fortunate that my mission in life, my vocation and my passion are all the same: I want to teach science in a manner that will develop compassionate, competent citizens who will be assests to our society,” Dowding stated.
Arch Coal is one of the nation’s largest coal producers. It employs more than 1,200 people in Wyoming and sells more than 90 million tons of coal from its mines in the region annually.
Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jim McBride and Arch Coal Chairman Steven Leer attended the ceremonies in Gillette where Dowding and the other award recipients were honored.
Category: Campus News