Thirteen staff and faculty members are retiring from OCU this year.
Human Resources is hosting the 2021 Starskys in order to honor and recognize staff and faculty contributions to OCU before they retire and leave the campus community. The event will take place in-person with an audience of up to 50 registered participants and virtually for those who do not attend.
The university will be recognizing retirees and faculty and staff members who have worked at OCU for landmark terms.
Dr. George Sims, interim provost, will be leaving OCU at the end of this year. He said he felt the program review work he has implemented in his position is important.
Sims said he has gotten to know a few of the retirees during his time at OCU.
“These are folks who have given their best effort over 20, 25, 30 years to building up OCU. But mostly, they’ve invested their best professional effort in probably three generations of students,” Sims said.
Sims said the value these individuals have contributed to the campus community cannot be counted.
Meghan Settle, design and production senior, said she took many classes with Judith Palladino, who is retiring after 29 years.
Settle said Palladino taught children’s theatre and creative arts courses, and she was Settle’s favorite professor at OCU.
“She’s really kind. She’s also super supportive, and she makes you think about things a different way. So, when you present work to her in class, she’ll build you up and give you good feedback, but she’ll also be like, ‘OK, what if you did it this way,’” Settle said. “Like when we presented creative drama activities, she always loved to be the devil’s advocate.”
Settle said Palladino told her students many entertaining stories and was very attentive to her individual students in her smaller classes.
Settle said she got to work with Palladino when she designed the lighting for Palladino’s production of “On to Victory.”
Mahmood Shandiz, professor of management science, has been at the university for 35 years. He said he was first introduced to OCU when he arrived to America from Tehran, Iran, in 1978 as an international student. He was studying for a Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University but arrived late and got housing near OCU. He said he used the Dulaney-Browne Library for his fall semester.
“Because of my background in statistics and researching social science and sociology, I was actually hired as a researcher, and after a year or two, in 1987 (when I came here I believe it was June of 1986), so in 1987 they asked me to teach full-time in the business school, and the story goes on,” Shandiz said.
He said after his time as associate dean of the School of Business, he became vice president for international admissions, and then became a faculty member again in 2015. He said he might continue teaching if the members of Meinders want him to, but he plans to travel, move to California due to its friendlier weather and larger Iranian population and read many books.
He said he is retiring because he wants to create space for newcomers and new ideas in the School of Business, and because of his age.
“I think that 35 years is enough, is enough,” he said. “You can’t work forever.”
He said he is happy for the work he was able to do, working with the other faculty members of the School of Business and analyzing data for them because it created a feeling of comradery and congeniality, and he could keep himself academically qualified.
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