A retired SIUC professor recently received an award from a national organization for an outstanding contribution to education.

On Nov. 20, Thomas Pace Jr., retired SIUC speech communications professor, received the Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award from the Speech Communication Association in San Antonio, Texas. The award is presented annually to a high school teacher or university professor by the largest national organization of speech teachers for a lifetime dedicated to distinguished teaching.

Pace began teaching at SIUC in 1965 and retired in July 1994. In his 29 years at SIUC, he touched many students and faculty.

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Mark Hickson, Department of Speech Communication chair at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and SIUC alumni, said that Pace was one of the best teachers he ever had.

He (Pace) served as a great example for all students, said Hickson.

John S. Jackson, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said Pace left his mark on the Department of Speech Communication.

I’ve known Tom Pace for 25 years and he is one of the most outstanding faculty members I’ve worked with in that period of time, he said.

Jackson said nominations came from many of Pace’s former students who now teach at colleges and universities across the country.

He said Pace received this award because of the relationship he held with his students.

He is a very decent, humane person who always treated his students with the utmost respect, and I’m sure that is one of the reasons he was honored, Jackson said.

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At SIUC, Pace received Outstanding Teacher of the Year award in the School of Communications in 1969 and the Outstanding Teacher of the Year from Gamma Beta Phi honor society in 1989.

James Van Oosting, chairperson of the speech communication department, said that Pace set an example for faculty as well as students.

Dr. Pace’s teaching bridged all of the curricular areas of the department, he said, Personally, he was a colleague from whom I learned so much discipline and about my profession.

Pace said that being a good teacher comes from experience.

I attribute being able to be a good teacher to the fact that I started working at a high school in the early 1950s, where I would teach the same course six hours a day, he said, School is a little different now because one doesn’t spend that much time in the classroom.

Pace said he believes that teaching is a lifelong relationship between student and teacher.

Mark Hickson, former student of Pace, said Pace proves this by maintaining a relationship with his former students.

He kept track of students and where they went with their career, he said.

Hickson was one of the people who nominated Pace for the Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award.

One of the reasons I nominated him was because he was a teacher 24 hours a day, Hickson said, He also knew who his students were as people and what their family life was like.

Hickson said that Pace made an great impression the very first day he had a class with him.

In the first class I had with him, there were approximately 25 or 30 graduate students, Hickson said, Dr. Pace walked by us one by one and told (us) who we were and where we had went to undergraduate school at. I later learned that he had memorized all of the information from our applications and our faces from pictures.

Hickson said Pace gave everyone a reason for pursuing education.

He said the purpose of education is to learn to cope with ambiguity, meaning the more education you have, the more pathways you have to choose from when trouble comes along, he said.

Pace said his most challenging time in teaching came during the Vietnam War era at SIUC.

It was difficult to show that theory made much difference when the world was burning, he said.

Pace, who was a speech major throughout college, received his bachelor’s degree in speech and theater in 1949 and a master’s degree in education in 1953 from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. He received his doctorate in speech communication at the University of Denver in 1957.

Before coming to SIUC, Pace taught at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas, the University of Denver, and Wichita Falls High School in Texas.