Around the Region:
News & Events
Office of
Regional Higher Education
Quick LInks
Chillicothe
Eastern
Lancaster
PIckerington
Southern
Proctorville
Zanesville
Phone: 740.593.2551
Regional Campus Spotlight
Scott Minar, professor of English, Lancaster Campus
June 2010
Scott Minar has been compared to the Pied Piper of education because he is often seen in the hallways of campus trailed by enthusiastic students. He has been named a 2010 Regional Higher Education Outstanding Professor.
“He challenges and excites students about his subject,” John Furlow, dean of the Lancaster Camspus, said. “The campus committee that nominated him recognized his many positive efforts on behalf of students and his efforts to make the Lancaster Campus a better place for faculty and for learning.”
In addition to teaching writing and literature, Minar has directed the Campus’ learning center, served as advisor to the student literary journal and held faculty leadership positions.
Minar’s full-length collections of poetry, The Palace of Reasons and The Body’s Fire, were published in 2006 and 2002, respectively. He and Edward Dougherty wrote Exercises for Poets: Double Bloom, also published in 2006. Minar edited The Working Poet: 75 Writing Exercises and a Poetry Anthology, published in 2009.
Novelist and poet Joyce Carol Oates nominated Minar for a Pushcart Prize, declaring his work “a remarkable find.” Mark Strand, Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States described Minar’s essay on Man and Camel as “one of the best things written about me.”
Minar received the The Emerson Prize for poetry from Ohio University, Prize Poem from the Steele Memorial Library Open Poetry Contest and the The Prize Poem Award from LaSalle College.
His essays, fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared in The Antioch Review, Ariel, The Georgia Review, High Plains Literary Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Organization and Environment, The Paris Review, Parnassus Literary Journal, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, The Westminster Review and other publications throughout the United States and Canada.
He also has written scripts for film and radio.
Prior to joining the Lancaster Campus faculty ten years ago, Minar taught at Bowling Green State University, Elmira College and Ohio University and was a guest lecturer in English at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Though he may be the Pied Piper of education on campus, outside of work Minar’s musical instruments of choice are his vocal chords and a guitar. He and colleague Patrick Drumm (associate professor of psychology) perform as “Stanley” at private functions and enjoy a regular gig at Port City Pub in Portsmouth. They also performed at the Chautauqua Poetry Festival.
The award honors faculty at regional campuses who have demonstrated excellence in teaching and scholarship, as well as have an outstanding record of service to their campus and the university. The recipient of the award carries the designation Outstanding Professor, Regional Campuses, for two years and receives an honorarium of $3,000 annually for each of those two years. Each campus may make one nomination each year
