The UNT Foundation Faculty Leadership Award acknowledges a faculty member who significantly impacts the academic enterprise through initiatives, leadership, and service

Dr. Bush joined the faculty of the UNT Higher Education Program in 2002.  In her program and department, she has chaired several committees, served as master’s program coordinator, and serves as program director at present. Within the College of Education, she was a past chair of the Faculty Assembly Committee for which she serves as a member currently. Dr. Bush has served the College on numerous other committees, and she has been recognized by the College for teaching and service excellence.

At the university, she served seven years with Faculty Senate as a senator, secretary, vice chair, chair, and immediate past chair.  Also, she chaired and was a member of several Faculty Senate committees including the ad hoc Policy Review Committee for academic affairs policies. She is co-chair of the Faculty Senate Policy Oversight Committee now.

Dr. Bush’s university, college, department, and program leadership grew from her philosophy of servant leadership with the leader as a supporter of and a spokesperson for faculty, serving without a personal agenda, often behind the scenes.   This type of leadership is at the heart of shared governance whereby all campus constituents have a role in the direction of the university. 

Within the national educational community, Dr. Bush served a three-year term as the vice chair of a council of her national professional organization, the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). She served in other leadership capacities within ASHE for several years.  Locally, Dr. Bush has been a committee chair and co-chair of the North Texas Regional P-16 Council.  This work led to a successful grant, in cooperation with Dr. Mary Harris, that initiated the development of area early college high schools. She hopes that her leadership in the local P-16 community has helped educators understand that university faculty care about student success along the educational pipeline. 

As part of this year's Salute to Faculty Excellence, faculty and staff members from across the College of Education were recognized for the past two years. Others recognized were:

2020

• Outstanding Staff: Shari Wroe, CHE
• Outstanding Lecturer: Cheryl Jennings, TE&A
• Outstanding Teaching: Smita Mehta, EPSY
• Outstanding Service: Miriam Bosch, EPSY
• Outstanding Senior Faculty Researcher: Wendy Middlemiss, EPSY
• Outstanding Junior Faculty Researcher: Veronica Jones Baldwin, CHE

2019

• Outstanding Staff: Reynaldo Quiroz, TE&A
• Outstanding Lecturer: Pamela Peak, EPSY
• Outstanding Teaching: Cynthia Frosch, EPSY
• Outstanding Service: Wendy Middlemiss, EPSY and Peggy Ceballos, CHE
• Outstanding Senior Researcher: Darrell Hull, EPSY
• Outstanding Junior Faculty Researcher: Lauren Eutsler, TE&A