FVCC art professor wins award

John Rawlings, a longtime art professor at Flathead Valley Community College, has been named the 2014 Association of Community College Trustees Faculty Member of the Year for the Western Region.

Rawlings traveled to the association’s Leadership Congress in Chicago on Oct. 24.

The award honors a faculty member in each of the association’s five regions.

The Western Region is made up of community colleges in Montana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Canada.

Rawlings has 49 years of classroom experience, 25 of which he has spent at FVCC.

The nomination referred to the college’s art program as “the gold standard for two-year art programs in the nation.”

He had a key role in designing the college’s Art Department facilities, which include multiple studios, labs and a student art gallery.

In 1994, Rawlings began leading student trips to Venice, Italy and has since taken more than 350 students to the city of canals. In 2008 he founded FVCC’s Semester in Venice Program, where students can spend a full term in Italy studying art and learning Italian.

He is a founder of the college’s Service Learning program, through which students have contributed more than 150,000 community service hours to Northwest Montana.

Rawling’s award is the fourth for FVCC in the college’s 47-year history, all of them in the past decade.

The association is the nonprofit educational organization of governing boards, representing more than 1,200 community, technical and junior colleges in North America.