NOVA Remembers Professor Nan Peck

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Emeritus Professor Nan Peck has passed away. Nan’s career at NOVA spanned 30 years. She earned her master’s degree in Speech Communication from Illinois State University in 1980, after which, she worked as a legislative aide in the office of Senator David Durenberger. She found this experience incredibly enriching and in her later teaching career would often draw on the knowledge she learned there. Nan was an innovator and early adopter of technology in the classroom; and she is credited with developing early Extended Learning Institute (ELI, now NOVA Online) classes that were available on NOVA TV in the early nineties. As then Annandale Liberal Arts Dean Bruce Mann wrote, “Nan is one of the most effective, creative and dedicated faculty members who work at ELI…her video is some of the best televised instruction that ELI has produced.” Nan is also credited as the animating force behind the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) that helped orient  so many of our faculty to NOVA. She is single-handedly responsible for organizing the very first Power Up your Pedagogy (PUP) conference in 2007 that the college still runs in January each year, helping countless continuing faculty maintain their edge as great teachers. As John Dever, former executive vice president of NOVA once wrote of her, “Nan always understood that there was no need to ‘import’ excellence into NOVA. It was already there. It just needed to be uncovered, nurtured and shared.”

Nan was unsurprisingly an excellent teacher herself and believed that communication skills were an essential pillar of NOVA’s degree programs. She worked tirelessly to promote the discipline and engage students and was known as a creative, fun and engaging professor who also held her students to high standards. In 2012, Nan was awarded the NISOD Excellence Award by The National Institute for Staff and Organization Development (NISOD) for her extraordinary work at NOVA. In 2014, in her role as chair of the Northern Regional Center for Teaching Excellence, she was responsible for organizing faculty development seminars that were well attended by VCCS faculty. After her retirement, she continued as teacher/trainer by organizing seminars for the very popular Lifetime Learning Institute. Nan was described by her colleagues as a “teacher’s teacher”—a distinction of which she was very proud.

Nan’s works for the college and community are too many and varied to list and do not begin to adequately describe what an important colleague, friend and mentor she was to so many in our community. Nan knew everyone and had an incredible knack for making people feel special. She was a tireless advocate for faculty and students, and through her vision, persistence, and leadership, she played a fundamental role in shaping the College into what it is today. NOVA and the broader VCCS community have been immeasurably enriched by her incredible service, and she will be deeply missed.

A Celebration of Life Service and other memorial events are being planned for Professor Peck—information about this and other events designed to recognize her many contributions are forthcoming.

Submitted by:
Jennifer Rainey, AN-Comm Studies & Theatre, JRainey@nvcc.edu