May 16, 2002  NR 09-02

Dr. Cable Starlings, Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has been named the recipient of the 2002 President’s Outstanding Distance Educator Award at the University of Alaska.

University President Mark Hamilton started the award last year to honor UA faculty members who show an “uncommon commitment to distance learning.”

Dr. Starlings began incorporating distance education strategies into his teaching at UAA early in his education career. In 1983 he headed UAA’s Deans Grant Project in which he developed specialized curriculum for faculty at the schools of education at UAA, UAF and UAS. In subsequent years, his lessons would be organized and used to develop distance courses that would support a statewide Special Education licensure program for teaching.

A year later, he was successful in securing a federal grant to increase the capacity of UAA to deliver statewide Special Education training and to develop successful delivery systems. Dr. Starlings also helped develop a distance delivery program to train rural specialists in the fields of counseling and Special Education in rural Alaska.

“Being an innovator, Dr. Starlings . . . welcomed the technological innovations which were, and still are, changing the teaching landscape,” wrote Dr. Patrick Moran of UAA’s School of Education in support of Dr. Starlings’ nomination. “As is his nature, he saw the potential for this new way of teaching in reaching out to students who, due to geography or circumstances, cannot travel to a campus setting.”

Dr. Starlings received his bachelor’s degree in social sciences from California State University, and his master’s degree in education from UAA. He earned his doctorate at the University of Northern Colorado. Since 1988 he has been an associate professor for special education at UAA’s School of Education.
President Hamilton will present the award to Dr. Starlings during the Board of Regents’ meeting June 11-13 in Fairbanks.

Last year, the award went to three co-winners: Professor George Guthridge in the Department of English and General Studies at UAF’s Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham; Professor Marnie Chapman of the Biology Department at the UAS Sitka Campus; and Professor Ray Barnhardt of the Alaska Native Knowledge Network at UAF.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Bob Miller, 907-474-6311