Lamar State-PA professor is elected secretary of state teachers’ group
Dr. David Sorrells, an associate professor of English at Lamar State College-Port Arthur, recently was elected secretary of the Texas Community College Teachers Association, the largest organization of post-secondary educators in the state.
In 2010, Sorrells was elected treasurer of TCCTA, which includes teachers from every educational discipline, plus counselors and librarians from public and independent two-year colleges in Texas.
Sorrells started his leadership role in TCCTA as a member of the Association’s Professional Development Committee, which ties in closely with his new position at Lamar State, where he recently was reassigned from teaching freshman- and sophomore-level English and literature courses to being the college’s Assessment Coordinator and Faculty Development Coordinator.
“Faculty members are well-training in their discipline. They know how to teach their subjects so students can understand the material,” Sorrells said. “But a lot of them don’t understand the administrative assessment process that accrediting agencies and the state legislature expect. Faculty development involves both acquiring more knowledge in the disciplines and learning how to accurately report how their students fared.”