UNA GRAD, ACTE TEACHER OF YEAR TO REPRESENT STATE CAREER TECH EDUCATORS IN WASHINGTON
Feb. 26, 2008
By Rebecca Walker
UNA Student Writer
FLORENCE, Ala. — When Judy Brown launched the Culinary Arts Academy at Bob Jones High School in Madison in 2003, she mixed her passion for teaching with several long hours, which resulted in a highly popular and successful program with students and the community.
That’s not all it got her. The 1978 University of North Alabama graduate will soon represent Alabama and career technology teachers at the country’s highest level of government. The opportunity comes with her recent Association for Career and Technical Education national Teacher of the Year award, which she accepted in December.
Next month, while in Washington, D.C., to address the ACTE’s national conference, Brown will meet with Congressional members to discuss the needs of career technology programs nationally.
Brown’s national recognition comes after 16 years of work and service in career technology education.
“When I started teaching at Bob Jones High School in 1999, career and tech education was not a popular class,” Brown said. “I built up the consumer sciences program, and many of those students followed me into the culinary program when it began.”
During the first year of the culinary program, only 11th and 12th graders could take the courses. Seven hundred students signed up. In the second year, there were 900 interested students, and by the time she left Bob Jones High School in 2006, there were more than 1,000 students wanting to participate, according to Brown.
She also began a nighttime culinary community class for adults.
Leading up to the national nomination, Brown received other awards from several agencies, including the first National Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America Integration of Core Academics Award in 2006. She became eligible for the national title when she was named Alabama’s Family and Consumer Sciences Teacher of the Year and Alabama’s Outstanding Career/Technical Teacher, both in 2006.
The award was presented Dec. 14, 2007, in Las Vegas after what Brown calls an intense interview process.
“I was questioned about the critical trends and issues of career and technology education. I stressed the teacher shortage and the importance of training teachers in technology, as well as the issues of integrating core academics into career technology education,” she said.
Brown was also asked to share success stories about her students, to which she happily obliged. Graduates of the Culinary Arts Academy have gone on to be chefs around the country, including the Hamptons, Miami and Denver, as well as being placed at the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson and Wales University, both highly respected institutions of culinary education.
One of the most unique aspects about Brown’s curriculum at Bob Jones was her emphasis on “teaming,” in which she makes a point to integrate many core academics into the program, including science, history, physical education, business and Spanish, among others.
Brown is currently an education specialist with the Alabama Department of Education, a role in which she is able to work with career technology faculty from all over the state.
“It’s great to work with teachers, but I miss students terribly every day,” she said. “I wish I could teach at least one day a week, but they won’t let me. I just have to remind myself that I am reaching many more students by working with the wonderful teachers in our state.”
Brown’s work reaches 550 family and consumer sciences teachers in Alabama. Her duties include building hospitality and tourism programs across the state, creating floor plans for family and consumer sciences programs, helping the schools find grants to pay for them and leading culinary workshops in the summer for teachers to become certified.
Brown attended UNA from 1976 until 1978. She remembers the faculty’s encouraging nature in what was then the home economics major. “All of the faculty were just wonderful in our department,” she said. “We had very few majors at that time, and they supported us.”
She was also a member of the Kappa Omicron Phi honor society and the Home Economics Club at UNA.
Brown is very enthusiastic about UNA’s recent addition of a culinary arts program, which she helped to get off of the ground.
“I’m very excited that UNA is the only four-year college in the state offering a culinary program,” she said. “This is going to hopefully keep students in the state instead of going to other sites to get their degrees. Students will have skills to go right into the workplace and run the business, even. It’s a win-win situation for UNA and for the Florence area.”
Brown said that winning the teacher of the year title has given her a platform from which to speak, not only locally and statewide, but nationally about career tech.
“I get to share a passion,” she said. “When I have a passion, it’s hard to shut me up.”
