SUNY Plattsburgh Faculty, Staff Recipients of 2024-2025 Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence

Six SUNY Plattsburgh faculty and staff members were selected as recipients of the 2024-2025 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence earlier this spring.

Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are State University of New York system-wide honors given to faculty and staff to acknowledge their “consistently superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence,” according to SUNY.

“These programs underscore SUNY's commitment to sustaining intellectual vibrancy, advancing the boundaries of knowledge, providing the highest quality of instruction, and serving the public good. Through these awards, SUNY publicly proclaims its pride in the accomplishment and personal dedication of its instructional faculty, librarians and professional staff across its campuses.”

Faculty and staff awards are given in five categories:  The awards provide SUNY-wide recognition in five categories: Faculty service, librarianship, professional service, scholarship and creative activities and teaching.

The Chancellor's Awards for Excellence in the Classified Service are system-level awards established by SUNY to give recognition for superior performance and extraordinary achievement by employees in the classified service.

This year’s SUNY Plattsburgh honorees are:

• Raymond Carman: Excellence in faculty service
• Arzu Gul: Excellence in adjunct teaching
• Shelley Laurin: Excellence in classified services
• Mark Lesser: Excellence in teaching
• Rajesh Sunasee: Excellence in scholarship and creative activities
• Kelly Theisen: Excellence in teaching

Dr. Raymond Carman

Carman, associate professor and chair of political science, joined the faculty as an instructor in fall 2014 after teaching positions at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa., and SUNY Binghamton. He was promoted to assistant professor in 2015 and associate professor in 2019. His areas of expertise include the courts, judges and politics, legal issues such as U.S. civil rights and liberties and U.S. Constitution law.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Niagara University, and both his master’s and Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton.

“I was very humbled to be awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service this year,” Carman said. “We have a great faculty, and many truly worthy individuals are nominated every year, so I am very grateful for being this year’s recipient.”

Dr. Arzu Gul

Gul, lecturer in English and interdisciplinary/area studies, joined the adjunct faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh in 2019, teaching courses in college writing, cross-cultural conversation, conversational English, advanced vocabulary skills, American slang and more.

She earned her bachelor’s in English at Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, Turkey, and both her master’s and Ph.D. at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio.

Shelley Laurin

Laurin, administrative assistant 1 in the Department of Nursing, joined the SUNY Plattsburgh staff as a keyboard specialist 1/office assistant 2 in the graduate admissions office in 2006, a position she held through August 2015. At that time, Laurin joined the education department and communication disorders and sciences as office assistant 2, where she stayed until moving to administrative assistant 1 in education. There she stayed through January 2021.

She joined the nursing department in January 2021 and has been there ever since. Throughout her career, Laurin has worked in student- and public-facing areas, whether helping students in graduate admissions, supervising work-study students, processing Project CONNECT billing and maintaining records for that organization, or greeting campus and student visitors.

In the nursing department, Laurin maintains records for all students, staff and faculty, facilitates individual tours of the nursing skills lab and high-fidelity simulation lab for prospective students, handles records management and equipment purchasing for the office, skills lab and simulation lab, among other duties.

When she heard the news about the Chancellor’s Award, Laurin said she was “in disbelief.”

“When I found out who the other nominees were, I didn’t think I had a chance. When the president called, I was shocked; I did not know what to say, and that is unusual for me,” she said.

Dr. Mark Lesser

Lesser, associate professor in the Center for Earth and Environmental Science, began his SUNY Plattsburgh career as an assistant professor in 2017 and was promoted to associate professor in 2022.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from University of King’s College (Dalhousie), Halifax, Nova Scotia, his honors bachelor of science and master’s degree in forestry at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, and his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyo.

Lesser’s areas of expertise include general, plant and community ecology, and forest ecology and management, climate change, and more. Upon learning of his award, Lesser said his initial thoughts “were amazed and honored to have been chosen.”

“I owe this to my colleagues and especially the students, who teach me as much, if not more, than I teach them,” he said. “Teaching and doing research with students is the single most important and motivating part of my job, and I am sincerely honored to be recognized for that.”

Dr. Rajesh Sunasee

Sunasee, professor and co-chair of chemistry and biochemistry, joined the faculty as an assistant professor of chemistry in 2013. He was promoted August 2017 to the rank of associate professor of chemistry and named professor and co-chair of chemistry and biochemistry in September 2023.

He earned his bachelor’s in chemistry with business management in 2003 at the University of Mauritius, Mauritius, an island country in the Indian Ocean. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 2009.

Sunasee, who also holds the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, teaches in areas of organic chemistry, nanochemistry, and undergraduate research, among other areas. A prolific research scientist on his own and with his research partner, Dr. Karina Ckless, professor and co-chair of chemistry and biochemistry, Sunasee has received numerous research grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, SUNY Presidential Research Awards, Mauritian Diaspora Research Funding Scheme, among others, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“This award means a lot to me as it recognizes a decade of productive research work in nanotechnology, which initially was an area of research not easy to venture in a small department at a primarily undergraduate institution,” Sunasee said. “I am humble to receive this prestigious award and would like to acknowledge the contribution of my past and current research students, research collaborators and both internal and external funding to support my research endeavors.”

Dr. Kelly Theisen

Theisen, associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry, joined SUNY Plattsburgh’s faculty as an assistant professor in chemistry and biochemistry in August 2018. In August 2021, she was named a faculty fellow in the Center for Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow through May 2022. Promoted to associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry in August 2024, Theisen was named interim director of the CTE through May of this year.

She earned her bachelor’s in Latin from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2009 and her Ph.D. in computational biochemistry from the University of Cincinnati in 2013. She did postdoctoral research at North Carolina University in Raleigh, N.C., and at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

Theisen said she was “surprised but grateful to win the award; there were a lot of nominees this year.”

“I would credit my students who took the time to write me letters and whose feedback I rely on to improve my teaching every semester,” she said. “I feel privileged to be able to teach and do research with our amazing students.”

— Story, Photos by Associate Director of Communications Gerianne Downs