Past Recipient

DR. CHARI SOWERS SELECTED AS
OUTSTANDING KANSAS BUSINESS TEACHER

Dr. Chari Sowers was presented the R. B. Russell/G. K. Walters Award for 1998 at a recent meeting of the Alpha Delta Chapter of Delta Pi Epsilon, a graduate honor society in business education in the School of Business at Emporia State University. This award is presented each year to an outstanding secondary or community college business teacher. 

Dr. Sowers attended Allen County Community College for one year and then transferred to Emporia State University where she received her bachelor and master degrees in business education. In 1989 she received an Ed.D. degree in business education from Oklahoma State University. 

Like many educators, Chari has alternated between teaching and furthering her own education. Early in her teaching career, she taught business courses at Iola High School and Mulvane High School; she was a math teacher at Brooks Junior High and was Educational Programming Specialist for USD 259. While on leave from Northwest High School, Wichita, Kansas, Chari pursued a doctorate along with teaching two sections of Business Data Processing Concepts as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the College of Business Administration at Oklahoma State.  She then returned to Wichita High School Northwest where she continues to teach business and computer studies courses and is the department's chair. Chari has had broad experience in the classroom having taught accounting, introduction to business, computer applications in business, computer programming in BASIC, Pascal, C++, computers & technology, and typing. At Wichita High School Northwest, she is a member of the Northwest High School Improvement Team, Chairperson of the NCA/QPA School Profile Committee, Building Assessment Coordinator, and Building Network Administrator. In addition to her full-time, high school position, Chari is Adjunct Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at Wichita State University, a position that she has held since 1983. Since 1995, Chari is also Adjunct Instructor for Secondary Methods in Computer Science at Friends University in Wichita.

Dr. Sowers holds current professional memberships in KBEA, NBEA, MPBEA, ISBE, DPE, Phi Delta Kappa. She has been professionally visible serving as KBEA's Executive Secretary and as KBEA's Convention Chairperson. Chari is also currently serving as a Member of USD 259 Web Site Advisory Board and is a Member of USD 259 District Technology Study Team. Chari's professional activities show that she shares her information with her colleagues: she has presented at the MACE Conference, presented at the USA Convention on the use of Laser Video Disk Technology, has been a trainer and rater for USD 259 Writing Assessments (Analytical Rating Guide), was a manuscript reviewer for Southwestern Publishing Company, and was keynote speaker at the Annual Business & Computer Teacher Conference at Emporia State University on New Teaching Paradigms: Using the Web to Teach Computer Courses. Others have recognized Chari for her professionalism. Included among her prior recognitions was being one of twelve finalists for the Golden Apple Award from WISE/BEST.

Innovative teaching techniques include constantly staying abreast of new technology and continually attending workshops seeking new rubric for each new course in the curriculum. She is the "Go to" person in her building. She works with teachers in development, maintains and troubleshoots technology problems. She has and is currently teaching a C++ class that is offered to other Wichita USD 259 students over the Internet.

Dr. Sowers' principal says that she is an energetic, innovative and a creative teacher. She is always willing to go the extra mile to make sure students learn.

Her colleague also said that student learning is her Chari's priority and that she uses innovative teaching techniques and is tireless in her efforts to keep our curriculum current. She is very aware of poorly motivated students and has developed an innovative project where such students researched an individual business and presented their results to the class in a variety of formats.

As a professional and as a person, Dr. Sowers is dedicated, caring, intelligent and intense. She is very deserving of the R. B. Russell/G. K. Walters Award of Outstanding Kansas Business Teacher for 1998. 

 

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