The East Texas Historical Association has honored Mary Kelley Scheer, associate professor of history at Lamar University, for excellence in educating the public about the history and culture of East Texas.
Scheer, a Lamar faculty member since 2002, accepted the association’s East Texas Educator of the Year Award Sept. 26 at its annual meeting in Nacogdoches. The honor, provided by the Ottis Lock Endowment, includes a plaque and a cash award. The late Ottis Lock, of Lufkin, was a lifelong East Texan who served the region as an educator, public official and business leader. A committee of association members selects the recipient.
“I was very pleased to be selected as a recipient of the Ottis Locke Award,” Scheer said. “I am honored to be in the company of three distinguished recipients from the Lamar history department, including Dr. Ralph Wooster, Dr. John Storey and JoAnn Stiles.”
Scheer’s teaching and research interests include Texas history, the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, women’s history and American social and reform movements. She is the author of “The Foundations of Texan Philanthropy” (Texas A&M University Press, 2004), the co-editor, with Storey, of “Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History (University of North Texas Press, 2008) and is now working on a book titled “New Women Who Shaped Modern Texas” (Harlan-Davidson).
“The association is proud to honor Dr. Scheer for the dedication to her craft and her excellent record as an educator at one of East Texas’ most important universities,” said Scott Sosebee, executive director of the East Texas Historical Association.
“Dr. Scheer’s work on Texas women and philanthropy has brought to her national attention. Her students have consistently presented papers at the association’s and other professional meetings, and she has received a number of honors and awards for her excellence in the classroom.”
Scheer is a native of San Antonio and a fourth-generation German Texan. She graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in San Marcos with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history in 1975 and earned her Ph.D. in history from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth in 2000. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Potsdam, Germany, in 2004 and now serves as the faculty campus advisor for the Fulbright program. She is a faculty sponsor for the Walter Prescott Webb Historical Society at Lamar and on the board of the East Texas Historical Association.
“I am one of the lucky few who knew very early in my life – in fact, in the seventh grade – that my career would be in the study and teaching of history,” Scheer said. “I was fortunate to have several important mentors who encouraged me – and that is what I try and do with my history majors and graduate students.”
Scheer also is working to extend her history outreach to the public schools by sponsoring the first regional history-day competition Feb. 25, 2010, on the Lamar campus.
She said her teaching philosophy is to “emphasize both the story of our past and the various interpretations where historians disagree.”
“I also try to show students how history is relevant to their lives in the 21st century. It is not just about dates, but also about individuals, their decisions and the causes and effects of those decisions that help shape our present and future.”
Scheer lives in Beaumont with her husband, Richard.
Lock, whom the teaching award honors, began his career as a teacher, served 30 years in the Texas Legislature, was chairman of the Texas Department of Public Safety and several other state agencies and retired in 1977 as a senior vice president of Southland Paper Mills Inc. He was appointed in 1963 as a regent of The Texas State University System, of which Lamar University is now a component.
