The Longwood University Board of Visitors has distinguished longtime professor Dr. Jim Jordan with the highest honor the governing body can bestow upon a faculty member: the Board of Visitors Distinguished Professorship.
Jordan is just the ninth member of the faculty to receive the honor in the university’s 175-year history, joining some of the most accomplished scholars to call Longwood home.
The Board approved the honor unanimously at its annual retreat last week. Jordan will receive formal recognition of the distinction at Convocation on September 11.
A beloved professor, Jordan has taught anthropology at Longwood for 36 years and founded the Archaeology Field School in 1980; it was named for him in 2012. The James W. Jordan Archaeology Field School provides year-round opportunities for students to join in ongoing research projects at sites from the Virgin Islands to Longwood’s own Hull Springs Farm on the Northern Neck. Students have excavated every summer since 1997 at the site of an American Indian village in Charlotte County.
"Dr. Jordan embodies the ideal of citizen leadership that is at the core of Longwood," said President W. Taylor Reveley IV. "His inspirational legacy at our historic university is unparalleled, and he has had a profound influence on the 11,000 or so students who have passed through his classroom. I hope this honor will convey the scale of gratitude Longwood feels for all he has done for this institution."
Jordan was selected the Virginia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1995, and was one of 11 faculty members throughout the state to receive an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia in 1992. He has received numerous Longwood honors, including the Fuqua Excellence in Teaching Award and the Student-Faculty Recognition Award. He is a naturalist for Virginia State Parks, a technical adviser for the television program "Bones" and, as chief faculty marshal, a familiar figure leading the formal procession and carrying the Longwood mace at academic ceremonies.
Faculty members who have previously received the distinction include: Rosemary Sprague (1968), Charles H. Patterson, Jr. (1973), Elizabeth Burger Jackson (1976), Elizabeth W. Etheridge (1991), William F. Dorrill (1995), O. Carolyn Wells (1999), Edward Douglas Smith (2003), and Judith R. Johnson (2005).
Leave a Comment