CLARION, Pa., Nov. 20 — Clarion University concluded its observance of Equity Week at its fifteenth Annual Equity Dinner and Awards Ceremony held Nov. 11. The week’s theme was “The Last Word on Race and Gender.”

Florence Shutsy-Reynolds, a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) member, was the keynote speaker and an award recipient.

Equity awards were also presented to President Joseph Grunewald, professors Dr. Sandra Trejos and Dr. Robert Girvan, Clarion students Jermaine Merrill and Geovanni Miller, and community member Betty McKisson.

Trejos, professor of economics at Clarion for five years, received the Outstanding Faculty Award.

Trejos was recognized for her impact in the classroom and for raising awareness of social justice and equity issues in the U.S. and around the world.

She has served as CUP’s International Programming and Study Abroad Coordinator, international business coordinator for the College of Business Administration, adviser to the Political Economy Club and as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.

Trejos has also assisted students in raising awareness of the Asian tsunami victims and the genocide in Sudan and Darfur. Trejos helped students raise funds to travel to New Orleans to assist in Hurricane Katrina rebuilding. A second trip is currently in the works.

Girvan, professor of sociology since 1973, received the 2009 Equity Award.

Girvan has served as an example of tolerance and understanding to his students and the community through being part of a trans-racial family and his involvement with university initiatives.

These include the Flexible All-Year Experimental School, the Center for the Study of Local Issues, Nuclear Freeze Group organizer, Martin Luther King Jr. Committee co-chair, Frederick Douglass Program, Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, and Pregnancy and Parenting Resources Initiative (PPRI).

Girvan works closely with Habitat for Humanity, and most recently helped to create the new Clarion University NAACP chapter. He also played a major role in the creation of the sociology and the sociology/psychology majors. Girvan plans to retire at the conclusion of the Spring 2010 semester. Betty McKisson, of Strattanville, received the Outstanding Community Award.

McKisson is a certified registered nurse practitioner (CRNP). She worked her way from nurse to CRNP and has helped people in the community for her entire life through her time as a nurse. She has worked with local physicians and here on campus at the Keeling Health Center.

McKisson holds many certifications, including Lymph Drainage I, Reiki Master/Teacher and Therapeutic Touch. She is an American Holistic Nurse and is a charter member of the newly founded Society for Oncology Massage.

McKisson operates Wellness Health Options, a holistic health center that houses a massage therapist, a chiropractor, and other complimentary services. She has been offering her services for more than 25 years.

Co-worker Caroline Vuksan said McKisson is “extremely community oriented and volunteers her time and service when possible.” Vuksan and McKisson said it is of utmost importance in to give back to the community. She is presently a teacher in the massage program at Clarion University Venango.

Florence Shutsy-Reynolds, of Connellsville, Pa. was honored with the Special Equity. Reynolds was the key-note guest speaker at the Equity Dinner and Awards Ceremony. She spoke of the inequity in her world as a young women in what was a traditional men’s role.

Upon graduation from high school in Connellsville, she enrolled in the ground school course offered by the federal government’s Civilian Pilot Training Program. She was one of the five students who scored the highest on the final exam and was awarded the 35-hour flight training resulting in a private pilot license.

She learned about the Women Airforce Service Pilots from the newspaper and entered the December 1943 class.

During the course of her flying career she served on Merced AAF Base in California, where her assignments included test flights on repaired aircraft, ferrying damaged aircraft to a repair depot, transportation of personnel and material, and tracking missions in support of the pursuit aircraft stationed at Fresno, Calif.

WASP was deactivated in December 1944, and she accepted a position with the B29 group stationed at Elmendorf Field, Anchorage, Alaska. She then accepted a commission as Second Lieutenant in the newly formed United States Air Force, traveled to the Panama Canal Zone in 1952, married and accepted an administrative position in the USAF.

After retiring, Reynolds started her own custom jewelry shop and, in 1986, she took over the operation of WASP Stores for the WASP World War II organization.

Reynolds said that she always knew she wanted to fly, and her family was extremely supportive of her decision to join WASP.

“My parents treated me, my sister, and my brothers equally, which was unusual at that time,” she said.

When people told Reynolds that girls could not do what she was trying to do, she would reply with a “don’t tell me that” because she said she knew she could.

Reynolds said that there are several big differences between what gender equality is now and what it was then. She said all you ever used to hear was, “Women couldn’t fly, women couldn’t work in factories.”

The message stressed to young women today is, “if you have a dream, go for it.”