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2007 University Service Award Anthony Sheppard

2007 University Service Award winner Anthony Sheppard and Dusty

Recreation, parks and tourism administration professor Anthony Sheppard will be the first to tell you he doesn’t become a part of University committees to make friends. 

“I’m good at fording streams, which is a useful talent when one also burns a few bridges along the way,” Sheppard says.

But friendships aside, Sheppard’s commitment to the University’s policy-making process hasn’t gone unnoticed. He was awarded the 2007 University Service Award for the College of Health and Human Services.

Joining the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies (since renamed) in 1997, after several years of very few new hires, Sheppard was a rare junior faculty member in a sea of established, tenured professors, and opportunities to serve on committees were abundant and readily accepted.

“It was a steep learning curve,” says Sheppard, who at the same time was asked to coordinate a program area in recreation and leisure studies. “I had to coordinate and teach courses for Commercial Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Management, an area in the department that had been without leadership.”

Through his work on University committees, including the College of Health and Human Services’ Academic Council, Sheppard learned—very well—how the system worked. Sheppard was asked to chair the Council his third and fourth year at the University. “I knew the rules, and apparently that made me qualified to run the meetings!” he says. 

Sheppard was also given the role of graduate coordinator for Recreation and Leisure Studies. “The graduate program, at that time, was teetering on the edge of oblivion,” he says. Only a handful of students were seriously involved with the program, so Sheppard studied the possible reasons why.

“I saw that students were given until the beginning of May to fill out applications to the graduate program,” he says. “But in reality, the applications were processed through the end of July.” Sheppard changed the deadline date. “It was the only logistical change, and I was sure it couldn’t be that easy,” he says. However, in just a few years, enrollment in the graduate program tripled and became one of the largest recreation and leisure studies graduate programs in the state.  “Since then, my colleague Kath Pinch has taken it still further,” he added “and we’re very proud of our program.”

Sheppard also began serving on the Faculty Senate early in his career, first as an alternate for a senior colleague. “I became a Faculty Senate member and then served on the Executive Committee for two years,” says Sheppard. “I enjoyed it immensely, because it involved campus-level decisions regarding things I had seen more locally.”

Throughout his 10-year tenure at Sacramento State, Sheppard also served as chair of the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, as a member of both primary and secondary ARTP committees, on the Bookstore Advisory Council and the campus UARTP committee.

 “I’m loud and I tend to say what’s on my mind, loudly,” says Sheppard. “And at least those who disagree with me know exactly where I’m coming from. It’s not about ‘winning,’ it’s about facilitating the process and nothing slows it down more than lack of clarity and apathy. The only way things get done around here is if people are willing to step up and get involved.”