Church gets honors from Bridgewater College

Published 9:58 am Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Bridgewater College has honored four alumni for their achievements and humanitarian service —including a Keysville resident.

The Distinguished Alumnus Award was presented to Dr. Audrey P. Church, who graduated from Bridgewater College in 1980. 

Church, a professor and coordinator of the School Librarianship Graduate Program at Longwood University,  currently serves as the president of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association, according to a press release from the college. “Previously, she served as the chair of AASL’s Educators of School Librarians Section (ESLS), as the ESLS representative to the AASL Board of Directors, and as a member of the School Library Research editorial board.”

At the state level, Church has served as president and secretary of the Virginia Educational Media Association (now Virginia Association of School Librarians) and as editor of its publication, VOICE.

“She has also served as president and secretary of the Virginia Educational Research Association and as chair of its dissertation award committee,” according to the release.

“At Longwood University, she has served as faculty representative to the board of visitors and was honored in 2015 with the Maria Bristow Starke Faculty Excellence Award.”

She is the author of numerous journal articles and three books, Leverage Your Library Program to Help Raise Test Scores (Linworth, 2003), Your Library Goes Virtual (Linworth, 2007) and Tapping into the Skills of 21st-Century School Librarians: A Concise Handbook for Administrators (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

According to the release, Church is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences.

Bridgewater College is a private, four-year liberal arts college located in the Central Shenandoah Valley.