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The Paul Pair Endowed Chair Award

Paul M. Pair, Sc.D.

The Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation

Recipients of the Paul Pair Endowed Chair Award

About Glendale Community College

A unique honor has been bestowed upon Betsy Cooper -- that of being the recipient of the first endowed chair in the United States of a two-year educational institution. In this role, Betsy continues to integrate technology into education with the same dedicated manner that helped qualify her for the award.

Betsy's educational background includes a B.A. in Botany from Connecticut College for Women and both an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Botany from Rutgers. She has taught at GCC since 1976 and has been an effective grant writer and editor. Betsy received the Innovator of the Year for GCC (1987-88). She has presented numerous papers on a national level and has served as Assistant Chair for the GCC Biology department since 1986.

Her desire to bring fruition to her plans for delivering instructional content through technology has caused her to develop her creative abilities and programming skills. The success with which Betsy has created instructional software that enables students to think critically, make choices, and see consequences of their choices in the process of learning Biology is evidence that the Paul Pair Endowed Chair selection committee chose well. Although Betsy has been actively integrating technology into education for several years, she continually strives to develop more complex and more effective software programs that enable students to stretch their thinking abilities. An upgraded computer and software purchased with some of the Paul Pair Endowed Chair award has enabled Betsy to "start exploring the world of multimedia." Currently she is learning to digitize video and make CDs to integrate into computer simulations.