At the end of the spring 2022 term, and upon the retirement of Associate Professor Dr. Patricia Dean, faculty and staff from both the Seidel School of Education and SU Libraries held a ceremony to name the Dr. Patricia Dean Environment Collection in her honor.
Dr. Dean (Patty to her friends and colleagues) is well respected in the international children’s literature community. She co-taught an international children’s literature course with Dr. Bond where they and their students visited and studied in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Poland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, England, Wales, and France, which resulted with many of those authors/illustrators visiting and speaking at the SU campus. Ernie and Patty presented at the IBBY Congress (International Board for Books for Young People) in Copenhagen, Germany, and at two conferences in Anqing and Nanjing, China. Patty conducted multiple research projects with SU students and traveled with them to present at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, at an international conference in Mons, Belgium, and at the European Early Childhood Education Research Association Conference in Bologna, Italy. Dr. Dean created a 3-week creative arts course for SU students in Italy, working with The University of Bologna, from 2011-2019 at which students from Louisiana State University and Lamar University (Texas) joined the classes periodically. Dr. Dean served on the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) nomination committee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to an author and an illustrator of children's books.
Patty also played a substantial role in the creation of the CRC and has generously donated well over 4,000 of her own quality children’s books to the CRC collections and continues to do so. She has been closely involved with the annual SU Children’s and Young Adult Literature Festival since her arrival at SU and chaired it after Dr. Bond’s passing, routinely arranging campus visits from quite a few of the well-known authors and/or illustrators.
In 2004, Dr. Dean, partnering with Seidel faculty Drs. Bond and Laura Marasco, accepted a challenge from Ms. Amy Marasco of The Nature Generation, an environmental non-profit, to create the nation’s first environmental stewardship book award for children and young adult books. The Green Earth Book Award (GEBA) promotes books that inspire children to grow a deeper appreciation, respect, and responsibility for their natural environment. The first awards were named in 2005, have evolved and expanded over the years, and continue to be awarded annually. Patty has served as the Chair or Co-Chair of the award selection juries for naming the winners, honorees, and recommended readings each year, since its founding. The GEBAs have become an integral part of the CRC’s environmental collection, which has grown to an impressive 1,800 item collection.
During her time at SU, Dr. Dean served as the Co-President of the Literacy & Social Responsibility Interest Group (SIG) of the International Literacy Association, whose mission is to develop “high quality programs integrating community service, citizenship character education, appreciation for diversity, environmental stewardship and/or caring” into their teaching. This focus on students speaks to perhaps her greatest gift to SU, her continual and immeasurable individualized service to her students during all of her 20 years of teaching at SU. She exhibits an unparalleled sensitivity for understanding and helping her students with whatever they need on their path to becoming amazing teachers.
