CYPRESS, Texas (Feb.17, 2020)  Lone Star College-CyFair is honoring four full-time professors committed to helping students understand the material, providing patience and inspiration for students to be their best, and going the extra mile to do all they can to help students succeed.

Teaching more than 60 years combined at LSC-CyFair are this year’s Faculty Excellence Award winners Sandra Harvey, Laura Taggett, Shamim Arastu, and Shawn Miller. Of special note, Harvey, Taggett and Miller are all previous Faculty Excellence Award winners.

Arastu began her journey at LSC-CyFair in 2006 after teaching middle and high school science for 7 years. She started teaching night classes for students studying to take their GED.  She became an adjunct teaching the First Year Experience Course and then a full-time professor of education in fall 2013. 

“Working with teachers gives me the best of many worlds. I get to guide those who want to enter a field that I am very passionate about,” she said. “I still get to interact and work with young students and also incorporate my love for science, especially neurology and anatomy.”

Arastu is committed to serving students and helping them explore and discover new information as well as their own capabilities. She dedicates her time to fostering a stimulating, creative and safe learning environment where deep thinking and growth can take place. 

“I encourage students to take charge of their learning and I enjoy making learning a very experiential process that incorporates student service learning, deliberate dialogues, role-play, case studies, and trips to schools and other education-affiliated organizations,” she said. “Students should be able to apply the strategies we use in my classroom with those that they will use in their own.”

A founding full-time history faculty member, Harvey has a degree in psychology and two degrees focused on history, which is a field she said always has something new and interesting to explore.

“History is to me is the best of all worlds. I love to examine how events impacted people in their everyday lives and the changes that occurred going forward,” she said. “It is a story that I enjoy working through with my students.”

She grew up as an only child in an impoverished and abusive home attending school with a goal of just surviving the day and not daring to envision the future. Harvey said she was not meant to succeed, but did, thanks to key faculty encountered throughout high school and college.

“I want to be for my students what these inspirational, supportive, encouraging teachers were for me. As faculty, we can make a difference in someone’s life without ever knowing how important we are to them,” she said. “So, I treat everyone with respect; I strive to inspire them to try; I lend support when they need it; and I celebrate with them when they succeed. No student is unworthy in my eyes.”

Taggett, another LSC-CyFair founding faculty member, can't imagine doing anything else but teach and hopefully make a difference in the world around her. She does her best to meet her students where they are and work with them to develop and strengthen skills that will help them not only in other classes. 

“I am constantly reinventing class assignments in the hopes of finding the magic one that appeals to students, prompting them to engage with research and express themselves clearly,” said Taggett, who teaches English literature and composition.

As the subject matter evolves throughout the years, Taggett continues to learn alongside her students. She attends professional conferences, “steals” ideas and innovations and had added multimedia assignments to engage students in perhaps a preferred means of communication: visual.

“I love learning and I hope to share that with my students,” she said. “And together, we can work toward building skills that will serve them both in later college classes and beyond, reinforcing the value of questioning, questing, and learning, for a lifetime.”

Hired in 2004 as LSC-CyFair’s first full-time accounting professor, Miller has had opportunities to take classes on study abroad expeditions and provide service learning projects in tax classes.  He also attends conferences to stay current in the field as new tax laws, international accounting and other changes lead to new standards.

“I have too much fun teaching to consider it a job,” said Miller, who believes students learn best through active engagement in the learning process, they should also have fun learning. “In my financial accounting class, we play Monopoly using Nintendo Switches, record transactions from an accounting standpoint and create financial statements based on our game performance. This is just one of many ways I try to keep accounting from being boring.”

With a passion for guiding students through the learning process, combined with an enthusiasm for the material he presents, Miller aims to cultivate learning with a goal of impacting all students in a positive manner, and encouraging them to reach their full potential. 

“Respect for my students is one of the most important things I can show - not only to motivate their openness to the class material, but also to inspire them to respect each other and all other people,” he said. “One of the most important concepts I hope to convey to students is that learning is a process that never ends.” 

All four faculty, chosen from student and coworker nominations, were recognized again at the system-wide awards ceremony.

Late Start spring semester classes at LSC-CyFair are available. For information go to LoneStar.edu/late-start.