Dixon Award Recipients Honored at WSU
OGDEN, Utah – The recipients of the Weber State University Alumni Association’s 2016 H. Aldous Dixon Award strive to create a rich learning environment that includes lessons in the classroom, in the community and on the court.
Associate athletic director Amy Crosbie and history professor Gene Sessions will be honored at a luncheon March 23 at the Hurst Center for Lifelong Learning on WSU’s Ogden campus.
Amy Crosbie
For six years, Crosbie has served as WSU’s associate athletic director and senior woman administrator, the highest-ranking female within athletics. She is heavily involved in the decision-making process and is an advocate for female athletes and administrators.
Crosbie helps ensure student-athletes take full responsibility for their conduct and grades.
“Occasionally I find myself sitting across from students after they have made a poor choice,” Crosbie said. “In these moments I support them, work to understand their background and identify teaching moments where I can help them grow, mature and learn from their mistakes.”
Crosbie also gets student-athletes engaged in the community. Under her leadership, student-athletes have aided the Christmas Box House, local animal shelters, YMCA, Special Olympics and many other organizations. They have collected and donated 771 school supplies, 758 pairs of shoes, nearly 1,000 pounds of canned food and 500 pounds of travel-sized toiletry items. Mentoring local youth is particularly satisfying.
“Student-athletes are faced with an inordinate amount of pressure to be successful,” Crosbie said. “They are measured by their performance on the field or court. Encouraging them to participate in community service helps them bloom and feel connected to a purpose beyond their own. Service brings light to areas where they can give of their time to enhance the community.”
Gene Sessions
History professor Gene Sessions earned his bachelor’s degree from Weber College in 1964. He returned as a faculty member 10 years later, and for the past 41 years has been one of the university’s biggest cheerleaders and favorite professors.
Sessions attends every home game of every sport to support the same students who pack his popular courses, including History 1700. In 2011, mostly due to the rising price of the texts, Sessions turned to the Internet and found comparable information for History 1700 on legal websites. He put required course materials online and dropped the textbook.
Sessions’ reliance on the Internet has increased his workload in terms of the constant need to update online learning materials and tests.
“Other than to educate them with excellence, my main goals with students are to ease their hassles and to save them money,” Sessions said.
Widely respected for his knowledge of Utah and Mormon history, Sessions has authored books and published numerous scholarly articles. He is one of only a handful of WSU faculty to have received the university’s two most prestigious awards — the Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor designation in 2006 and the John S. Hinckley Fellow Award in 1991.
“I think our most important responsibility to our students is to make them proud that they are students at Weber and that they know that they are attending the very best undergraduate institution in the state, hands down,” Sessions said.
Since 1970, the WSU Alumni Association has presented the Dixon Award to outstanding faculty and staff who have distinguished themselves professionally and taken extra measures to meet the needs of students. The award is bestowed in memory of President Dixon, who served as the school’s chief administrator from 1919-20 and from 1937-53.
Known for his dedication to higher education and warm rapport with students, Dixon stated on more than one occasion, “Young people are the foremost of my hobbies.”
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Allison Barlow Hess, Director of Public Relations
801-626-7948 • ahess@weber.edu- Contact:
Nancy Collinwood, Alumni Relations executive director
801-626-6885 • ncollinwood@weber.edu