JOHNSON CITY – East Tennessee State University will confer more than 1,300 degrees during Commencement Exercises on Saturday, Dec. 11, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the Ballad Health Athletic Center. Gayle Conelly Manchin, who is federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), will deliver the keynote address at 10 a.m. ETSU faculty member Dr. Sean Fox, who won the Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching, will address graduates during the 2 p.m. ceremony.
Manchin works directly with the ARC’s 13 member governors, their state alternates
and program managers, and a network of local development districts to continue to
build community capacity and strengthen economic growth throughout Appalachia. She
assumed this position earlier this year after being nominated by President Joe Biden. 
From 2000 to 2004, she directed the AmeriCorps Promise Fellows in West Virginia and implemented a statewide initiative, WV Partnerships to Assure Student Success. From 2005 to 2010, she served as West Virginia’s First Lady and was appointed to serve as a member and later president of the State Board of Education. She also served as cabinet secretary for the West Virginia Office of Education and the Arts.
Manchin states that her top priorities as ARC federal co-chair are to support the creation of economic opportunities in the Appalachian region, improve broadband access and critical infrastructure in Appalachian communities, and to address the region’s opioid crisis.
The Distinguished Faculty Award, which Fox received, is the highest honor presented to an ETSU faculty member. A native of Johnson City, Fox received his bachelor of science degree in forensic sciences and molecular biology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007 and returned home to enroll in the Ph.D. program in biomedical sciences at ETSU. He finished the program in 2013 and joined the faculty.
Now a lecturer and microbiology laboratory coordinator in the Department of Health Sciences in the College of Public Health, Fox carries one of the largest teaching loads in that college. Despite that heavy teaching load, he manages to mentor and guide his students both professionally and personally.
A colleague on the faculty who nominated Fox for the faculty award described him as
“very capable but absolutely unassuming, successful but absolutely non-self-promoting,
an astute observer but absolutely uncritical of others.”
ETSU’s Commencement ceremony will also be streamed live at etsu.edu/classof2021.
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