Julie Ballenger, Ph D Alumni Achievement Award Winner Video

Julie A. Ballenger, Ph.D.
88 MS Biology
Ellerslie, Georgia

Dr. Julie A. Ballenger, Ellerslie, Ga., graduated from FHSU with a Master of Science degree in botany in 1988. She earned her B.A. in biology from Central College, Pella, Iowa, in 1983 and her Ph.D. in botany from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, in 1992. She has studied in Mexico, the Bahamas, London, Panama, Peru, Botswana, Ecuador, Belize, Australia and New Zealand. She is a professor in the Department of Biology of Columbus State University. She was also a teaching fellow at Miami University and a post-doctoral research associate at the L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. She began at Columbus as an assistant professor of biology in 1995.

Julie deserves this award because she has exhibited vision and motivation far beyond what one usually finds in a college professor, especially in the area of international education, writes Dr. Eugene Fleharty, professor emeritus of biological sciences at FHSU. Furthermore, her enthusiasm has infected her colleagues not only in biology but other disciplines as well. This has led Columbus State University to be recognized by the Georgia Board of Regents as the most internationalized campus in the entire Georgia educational system of 17 colleges and universities.

This internationalization resulted mainly through the efforts of Ballenger and a colleague. The sciences were left out of the original program of internationalization, established at Columbus as a result of a Board of Regents request that all Georgia campuses under their direction increase the emphasis on international education. Ballenger and her colleague developed an independent international studies program, which led to tropical ecology courses in Africa, Australia and Latin America and health care courses in the Bahamas. Before long, said the vice president of academic affairs, science was sending more students abroad than anyone else on campus.

She is also the interim director of Oxbow Meadows, the result of a $90 million rehabilitation project that turned an old landfill into a 1,600-acre wetlands and academic center.

Her awards and honors include Educator of the Year at Columbus, an honor she won in 2003. That award is given by the student body to recognize outstanding commitment to education and student success. She also won the Faculty Development Award four times and, in 2008, she was given the Outstanding Service Award. In 2007, the Columbus State chapter of Beta Beta Beta Biology Honor Society, with Ballenger as chapter adviser, was named the nations best in scholarship, dissemination of scientific information and promotion of biological research.

She is a member of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, Southeastern Biologists, the Georgia Academy of Science, the International Association of Botanists, the Association of Southeastern Biologists, the Botanical Society of America and the National Geographic Society. She has also been the national advisor for the local chapter of Beta Beta Beta, the national biology honor society, and was president of the local chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the academic honor society, and also of Phi Beta Delta, the international honor society.

Ballenger, and her husband, Walter Chambers, reside in Ellerslie, Ga.