Southeastern faculty, staff receive top awards at convocation

Southeastern Louisiana University opened the 2025-26 academic year Friday (Aug. 15) with its fall convocation that included presentation of the President’s Awards for Excellence, the university’s highest honor for faculty and staff.

The event also included announcement of endowed professorships and scholarships, new faculty and staff, faculty tenure and promotion, emeritus/emerita recipients, and recognition of service awards to faculty and staff who have worked at the university for 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 years.

Receiving the President’s Awards for Excellence were Professor of Mathematics, Alan Cannon, excellence in teaching; Assistant Director of Landscape and Grounds, Carlos Doolittle, excellence in unclassified staff service; Associate Professor of History, Keith Finley, excellence in research, and Professor and Gallery Director, Cristina Molina, excellence in creative activity.

Cannon joined the Southeastern faculty in 1995 as assistant professor of mathematics. He tries to improve as an educator by attending workshops aimed at teaching. He says he enjoys learning about different perspectives in conveying information, conducting assessments, relating to students, and interacting with unique student populations. 

In his leadership role, Doolittle has enjoyed influencing campus outdoor spaces for the benefit of students, fellow employees, and campus visitors. He sees campus as the venues between the buildings – the courtyards and corridors. He also enjoys designing renovations to campus landscapes to refresh the campus experience.

Finley began his time at Southeastern in 1996 as a graduate student. Later as a masters candidate, he dabbled in the areas of history that would shape his research. While a student, he completed a paper that examined Lyndon Johnson’s tenure as Senate Majority Leader. From that paper he narrowed his focus to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. His doctoral dissertation ultimately became his first book titled “Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965.”

As an art educator and artist, Molina has a history of developing service-learning curricula that gives students the opportunity to work directly with their communities, which has had an incredible impact on student learning. Under her stewardship, Molina’s classes have collaborated and presented digital media public art projects with the New Orleans Arts Council, The Pharmacy Museum in New Orleans, The New Orleans Jazz Museum and the Hammond Regional Arts Center.