{"id":21276,"date":"2015-09-26T16:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T21:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=21276"},"modified":"2015-09-26T14:38:53","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T19:38:53","slug":"austin-peay-state-universitys-phi-alpha-theta-wins-seventh-best-chapter-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2015\/09\/26\/austin-peay-state-universitys-phi-alpha-theta-wins-seventh-best-chapter-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University\u2019s Phi Alpha Theta wins seventh Best Chapter Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – On the Austin Peay State University campus last week, students and faculty finally stopped avoiding Dr. Minoa Uffelman, associate professor of history.<\/p>\n

For the last six years, the University\u2019s Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) history honor society, which Uffelman advises, has been recognized each fall with the national Best Chapter Award, and when September arrived with no word from the national organization, her colleagues didn\u2019t know what to say to her.<\/p>\n

\"APSU's<\/a>

APSU’s Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) history honor society<\/p><\/div>\n

Then, on Friday, September 18th, the APSU Department of History and Philosophy\u2019s administrative assistant sent Uffelman a text message.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something in your mailbox,\u201d the message read.<\/p>\n

The APSU professor hurried to campus, where she found a letter congratulating the organization for winning its seventh Best Chapter Award. The club was named best chapter in the nation for the organization\u2019s Division IV, which consists of schools with between 10,001-15,000 students.<\/p>\n

“This has been the longest we\u2019ve ever had to wait to find out,\u201d Uffelman said.<\/p>\n

And she wasn\u2019t the only one feeling a bit nervous these last few weeks. Student members from last year worried they might have caused the streak to come to an end.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t not win after six years,\u201d Jen Kaiser, incoming PAT president, said. \u201cIt was nerve wracking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaiser, a graduate student in the military history program, joined the nationally recognized organization when she was a sophomore pursuing a B.A. in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t as involved as I should have been, and (the PAT) put me through conferences and publications, and they\u2019re a really big help for anything like that,\u201d she said. As a PAT member, Kaiser has presented her research at two regional conferences and at a national conference in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Her friend Larissa Dougherty, a fellow graduate student and PAT communications officer, didn\u2019t join the organization until her senior year. She has since presented at conferences and met some of the top names\u2014or \u201cacademic rock stars,\u201d as her classmate Kaiser calls them\u2014in her field. When she graduates from APSU, she plans to enroll in another graduate program in Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to put the military aspect into museum work, at battlefields, fortresses and concentration camps,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Graduate student Alex Poppendorf was, perhaps, the most eager to win the Best Chapter Award because she served as the PAT president last year. Like her classmates, shejoined the organization to boost her resume, but she quickly found something more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a social organization, necessarily, but it creates a community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

[320left]In addition to bringing APSU a little national recognition, the organization prepares students like Poppendorf, Dougherty and Kaiser to be successful once they graduate. In the last seven years, PAT alumni have gone on to earn master\u2019s and doctoral degrees and work as historians and teachers around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cPAT members are working at state and national parks, some are working at libraries and in archives,\u201d Uffelman said. \u201cOthers are in law school and several are in the military. Alumni are social workers, councilors and working in business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my ten years as advisor I have been astounded by the talent of the students, how hard they work and how creative they are. It has been my honor to guide them in their academic careers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – On the Austin Peay State University campus last week, students and faculty finally stopped avoiding Dr. Minoa Uffelman, associate professor of history. For the last six years, the University\u2019s Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) history honor society, which Uffelman advises, has been recognized each fall with the national Best Chapter Award, and when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[16437,23,6391,4469,262,825,26802,25372,4472],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-5xa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21277,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21276\/revisions\/21277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}