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Two University of Memphis professors have received First Tennessee Professorships. Cary Holladay, associate professor of English, and Dr. Deborah Lowther, professor of instruction and curriculum leadership, accepted the awards during the recent Faculty Convocation on campus. The three-year appointment recognizes outstanding contributions to the University’s educational, research, outreach and service missions.

Cary Holladay

Holladay’s stories have appeared in such publications as New Stories from the South, Epoch and The Georgia Review. She has received numerous honors, including the Goodheart Prize, the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship, and an O. Henry Prize. In addition, Holladay has won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and the Miami University Press Novella Competition. In 2006 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Lowther has devoted her academic career to the area of K-12 technology integration. This focus is illustrated in her ongoing research, publications, presentations, and work with graduate students. Lowther serves or has served as the lead researcher for multiple high-profile studies investigating technology integration policies and practices through her work with the Center for Research in Educational Policy. These include two U.S. Department of Education Institute of Educational Sciences studies:  Hybrid Algebra 1 and TN EdTech Accountability Model.

Dr. Deborah Lowther

She is co-author of two leading technology integration textbooks, Instructional Technology and Media for Learning (9th Ed.) and Integrating Technology into the Curriculum (4th Ed.). Both books have received national awards and have been translated into multiple languages. Collectively, her scholarship includes 82 published works.

Lowther has a strong commitment to mentor and support graduate students. She has chaired 14 dissertations of students who successfully completed their doctoral studies and is currently chairing six doctoral students working on their final research residency or dissertations. She actively engages her doctoral students in research and scholarship, which has resulted in 19 publications and 23 presentations that were co-authored with doctoral students.

The First Tennessee Professorships were established in 2005 as part of a partnership between the First Tennessee Foundation and the U of M to help the University retain outstanding faculty and to advance its goal of becoming a first-rate metropolitan research university.