West Virginia University - News and Information Services
Barbara Ludlow wins WVU's Buswell Award for outstanding service to women
When Barbara Ludlow talks about “going the distance” for her students, the West Virginia University professor isn’t being shamelessly boastful or self-congratulatory.
She’s simply being as truthful, and as literal, as she can be.
There’s “distance” in the pure, geographic definition of the word: the educator’s innovations in high-tech, distance learning via computer have helped students who might not normally do so net degrees from Summers County, W.Va., to tiny Saipan, in the South Pacific.
And there’s “distance,” in the full emotional measure of its meaning: Dr. Ludlow operates with an ethical, moral compass that helps her students, especially women, to go the emotional distance to complete that academic journey no matter what – be it a miscarriage, a bitter divorce or the sudden downturn of an elderly parent’s health right in the middle of a semester.
For that, WVU is honoring her with one of its highest awards for human outreach: the Mary Catherine Buswell Award for Outstanding Service to Women.
She will receive the award on Friday, April 15, at a 7 p.m. ceremony in the Mountainlair Ballroom, as part of the University’s Weekend of Honors observances.
Buswell, the award’s namesake, taught English at WVU from 1947-78 and was an early proponent of women’s rights on campus and throughout the Morgantown community.
That meant, of course, encouraging and empowering the female contingent of her classes, who were saddled with a whole host of care-giving responsibilities that went well beyond the course syllabus.
For Ludlow, the more things have changed – the more they’ve stayed the same. While technology makes it possible for students to sit in on her classes at Allen Hall by way of cyberspace, women college students continually face more and more pressures and demands on their time away from the textbooks.
“The women are theones who are working outside jobs, and caring for their children on top of coursework when they’re trying to complete their degrees. They’re the care-givers. Part of my job is to understand that, and let them set their own schedules, in a sense, since a lot of these classes are online.”
The biggest part of her job?
Listening.
“Being a sympathetic listener, and letting that student know that I’m going to help work out the class requirements while she’s going through whatever it is she’s going through,” Ludlow said. “A little breathing room makes a big difference.”
She’s gotten very used to dispensing that breathing room over the years, whether she’s answering an emotional e-mail or talking to a tearful student on the telephone.
One time she took a call from a crying student who was worried about missing several classes – even though she had just suffered a miscarriage. The student actually apologized, Ludlow recalled.
“She said, ‘I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t be crying.’ I said, ‘Of course you should. You just lost your baby.’”
Ludlow set the receiver down only after the student had talked through her concerns. She also gave her instructions to call back in a few days, so teacher and student could work through the particulars of the missed assignments.
“I told her she was a strong person, but she needed to take some time,” Ludlow said. “Students aren’t always used to hearing that, but the thing I always stress is that they’re people first, students second.”
The Brooklyn-born Ludlow, meanwhile, became a student all over again after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical languages – only to find herself adrift without a teaching job in Delaware in the early 1970s.
She volunteered at a school for children with mental retardation and found the work so rewarding she went back to school as a special education major. She earned a master’s degree in special education from the University of Delaware in 1974 and a doctorate from WVU in 1983.
Ludlow is the recipient of several national, university and college teaching awards, and recently landed a $1.2 million grant to develop a distance-learning course for teachers of students with severe and multiple disabilities.
She lives in Morgantown with her husband, Michael Duff, a self-employed media specialist who produces her online courses and other teaching programs.
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