Retired Assistant Professor Awarded Professor Emeritus

 Eastern Shore Community College awarded retired Assistant Professor Paul Weitzel the status of Professor Emeritus during the 2024 Spring Commencement on Wednesday, May 8th. The establishment of the status of Professor Emeritus is recommended as a method of honoring teaching faculty for meritorious service to the college. 

To be eligible, the faculty member must be retired and usually will have the rank of Associate Professor or Professor with a minimum of ten years of service in the VCCS and have made a significant, meritorious contribution to the college or the VCCS. Assistant Professor Paul Weitzel served the Eastern Shore Community College as an instructional faculty member for 25 years. 

Over the course of his 25 years at ESCC, Paul’s service to the college, its faculty and students included: Business Transfer Program Head; Chair of the Business, Information Technology and Mathematics Department; President of the Faculty Senate; long standing member of the VCCS Chancellor’s Faculty Advisory Committee; and, Chair of various ESCC Standing and Ad Hoc Committees, including Promotion-Retention and Faculty Recognition and Reward. 

Actively involved at the VCCS System level, Weitzel served on various state-wide initiatives including: Faculty Evaluation; Administrative and Professional Evaluation; and Diversity and Inclusion; Articulated Accounting Learning Outcomes; and the VCCS-SCHEV Transfer Virginia Statewide Courses Initiative. 

ESCC faculty member and colleague of Weitzel’s, ESCC English Professor Bill McCarter commented, “For a quarter of a century Professor Paul Weitzel served Eastern Shore Community College and the entire Eastern Shore community. He traveled Virginia, chaired countless, statewide committees, and guided VCCS policy; he was an ambassador for this college and a tireless advocate for academic integrity, institutional diversity and much, much more.” 

Professor Weitzel is only the third Professor Emeritus in ESCC’s sixty-year history. When asked why he worked at the community college level his response was: “To transform the communities in which I live.”