Dr. Kelli Carmean and Dr. Kevin Minor have earned the highest honor for teaching excellence at Eastern Kentucky University.
Carmean, a professor in the Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Social Work, and Minor, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Police Studies, have each received the 2017-19 EKU Foundation Professorship. The annual honor recognizes those who demonstrate outstanding abilities in the three primary roles of a faculty member: teaching, service and research. The professorship provides a salary supplement for two years.
Carmean joined the EKU faculty in 1993 and served as coordinator of the anthropology program from 2003 to 2010 and as department chair from 2009 to 2015. She currently serves as the faculty liaison for the University’s education abroad program.
She was selected to present the Roark Distinguished Lecture at EKU in 2010; was a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute participant in 2011, researching Mayan culture in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize; and received a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women in 2013 to present archaeology through historical fiction and reach a wider audience with her “House of the Waterlily: A Novel of the Ancient Maya World,” to be published this year.
Another of Carmean’s research interests is the Fort Ancient of the Ohio Valley.
Carmean earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and her Ph.D. degree in anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh. She was also a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
Minor, who joined the EKU faculty in 1992, specializes in theories of crime and punishment, institutional and community corrections, juvenile justice and capital punishment. Over the past three decades, he has published four books and more than 60 journal articles and anthology chapters related to those topics. His latest research centers on the death penalty, investigating class as a factor where most work has focused on race and other variables.
In addition to receiving national and international recognition for his work, Minor has served as consultant to various organizations including the National Institute of Corrections, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the United States Government Accountability Office, the National Major Gang Task Force, the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice, and the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts.
Minor earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and criminology from Indiana State University, a master’s degree in correctional psychology from Emporia State University and a Ph.D. degree in sociology/criminology from Western Michigan University.
All full-time tenured faculty members are eligible for the award. The selection is made by a committee composed of faculty, and the process provides for a high degree of peer review.
Sixty-one professors have been honored for teaching excellence by the EKU Foundation since the awards were first given in 1988.