By Shai Vogler
Ranger Reporter
The latest recipient of the Mead Award for outstanding faculty is Bruce Moseley, paralegal studies program director.
Moseley received the award at the commencement ceremony in May.
Each year, Amarillo College gives faculty and students the opportunity to nominate a faculty member whose presence has stood out to them.
Created in 1988 and named after AC’s second president, the John F. Mead Faculty Award is considered to be the college’s highest faculty honor and is presented to the faculty member or members with the most outstanding nominations who has displayed excellence in teaching and student success.
Moseley is a University of North Texas and St. Mary’s University School of Law graduate who said his love for law was discovered by luck.
With his mother-in-law as a driving force of confidence, he completed law school and passed the bar exam. He ended up practicing law at an Amarillo firm. he then began to take classes at AC that enabled him to take the patent bar exam to allow him to be a patent attorney.
Moseley said he knew he wanted to be a college professor after taking his first college class, and once he started at AC, he knew he wanted to teach a class here. He talked to the paralegal program director about teaching, discovered she was leaving, submitted his application and ended up getting offered the position he fills today.
“It was an easy decision – much more rewarding than just practicing law,” he said. He described it as a dream job and said he will be doing it the rest of his life.
When starting his new position at AC, Moseley made it a priority to recruit students into the paralegal studies program.
He said the Amarillo legal field is robust, and he encourages students with its job availability.
Since he began to teach at AC, according to www.actx.edu, Moseley has more than quadrupled the paralegal program’s number of majors.
Not only has he increased the program’s numbers, but he has made a lasting impact on his students. paralegal studies major Joan Prat said in an email, “That man changed my whole life.”
Outside AC, Moseley also continues to practice law at the Blackburn law firm, further reinforcing his joy of the law.
He said he was shocked to receive the award and that while he had set a goal on the award he didn’t expect it so soon amid such a great pool of contenders.
To see all the Mead Award recipients, one can go to the photograph display on the second floor of the College Union Building.
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