2011 Award Winners

NCBEA's Secondary Business Teacher award recipient is Judy K. Albus of Illinois. Judy has been an educator for the past 36 years with the last 20 years as a business educator at Edwardsville High School in Edwardsville, Illinois. During her career, Judy has taught a wide variety of business education classes; including Accounting (Beginning, Advanced, and College), Business Law, Cisco Networking, Cooperative Education, Computer Literacy, Consumer Education, Data Entry, Keyboarding, Office Technology, Software Applications, and Shorthand and Transcription. As an advocate for personal financial literacy, Judy has been teaching and enhancing the learning of Consumer Education for her students. Her students have taken the national Financial Capability Challenge each year with outstanding results from this national test.

NCBEA’s award for the Postsecondary Business Teacher is Ohio’s Shawn Lee Orr. Shawn is an assistant professor/dean of faculty at Davis College in Toledo, Ohio. Shawn's 17 years as a college professor have included the redesign and development of curriculum for 22 different business classes that utilized classroom assessment techniques, web based and web-enhanced courses, and externships. She has taught 100 and 200 level courses and has touched the lives of more that 4,000 students during her teaching career. Shawn believes one of her greatest strengths as a teacher is being able to engage student in learning through the utilization of learning styles. She creates lessons plans around the four learning styles to ensure that she meets the learning needs of every student in her classroom.

NCBEA’s award for the Collegiate Business Teacher is Dr. Margaret J. Erthal of Illinois.  Dr. Erthal has been a business educaton educator since 1975 and has taught at the secondary and university levels. She began teaching Accounting; Shorthand I and II; Keyboarding I, II, III; Secretarial Practice, Consumer Education, Business Math, and Notetaking. After earning her M.S. Degree in Business Education and then her Ph.D. Degree in Workforce, Education, and Development from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Dr. Erthal worked for 20 years at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as the Business Education Program Director, Computer Coordinator for Curriculum, and Instructor. She created new curriculum that included technology, and through Erthal's tenure at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, the business eudcation program grew from 20 to 100 students in four years. After leaving Southern illinois University Edwardsville, Erthal was at Illinois State University from 2002-2005. She served as the Business Teacher Education Program Director and instructor. Dr. Erthal rewrote the business teacher education portion of the university catalog to reflect current information, which included course requirements, course summary, and course sequences. Again, Erthal helpd to increase enrollment in the progam to over 100 students.