UB's Vice President for Student Affairs, Shelia Burkhalter, Receives NASPA's Region II Fred Turner Award
June 10, 2015
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
Shelia Higgs Burkhalter, vice president for Student Affairs at the University of Baltimore, received the 2015 National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Region II Fred Turner Award for Outstanding Service. The award was presented to Burkhalter on June 9 during NASPA's Region II Conference at The George Washington University.
The award, named for a past chair of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Board of Directors (1958-59) and former chief student affairs officer at the University of Illinois, honors a NASPA member who has served in leadership roles at the state, regional, national, or international levels of NASPA, and who has had, at minimum, 10 continuous years of NASPA membership. The Fred Turner Award is NASPA’s equivalent of a lifetime achievement award.
Burkhalter serves as the University of Baltimore's chief Student Affairs officer, a role in which she provides strategic leadership for a comprehensive, campus-wide approach to out-of-class learning. During her tenure, UB has earned a number of accolades, such as its inclusion in the 2014 national "30+ Promising Places to Work in Student Affairs" list by The American College Personnel Association and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education Magazine. UB also was selected as a member of the 2014-15 National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Lead Initiative.
"I join with the entire UB community in congratulating Shelia on this award," said Kurt L. Schmoke, president of the University of Baltimore. "We have known for quite a while that she is considered one of the top professionals in her field. Our students benefit from her expertise on a daily basis."
Burkhalter has held a variety of volunteer appointments within the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and The Placement Exchange. Most notably she served on the NASPA Region IV East board from 2001-05 as the Region IV East Minority Undergraduate Fellows Program (MUFP) Coordinator. She served as a MUFP Summer Leadership Institute Faculty Member in 2003, 2006 and 2007. Burkhalter also chaired the national NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program (NUFP) Board from 2007-09. During her tenure, she helped to establish the NUFP Scholarship Fund and secure ongoing corporate funding for the NUFP Pre-Conference.
Burkhalter earned a Managerial MBA through the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas in 2009, a Master of Science in Education specializing in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1998, and a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communication and Political Science from Southeast Missouri State University in 1994.
The University of Baltimore is a member of the University System of Maryland and comprises the College of Public Affairs, the Merrick School of Business, the UB School of Law and the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences.