New York, NY, February 28 — Richie Narvaez, author and Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching this month.

“I am honored and humbled. It’s important to me but more important that this award exists, to recognize teachers who so often get disregarded,” says Narvaez, who teaches in the English and Communication Studies department at FIT. “We don’t do it for the medals, but it is nice to get one! I don’t want to take it off now. It’s heavy.”

According to SUNY, the Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are conferred to acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of continuous academic excellence. The Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching recognizes consistently superior teaching at the graduate, undergraduate, or professional level in keeping with the State University’s commitment to providing students with instruction of the highest quality. Award recipients personify professional excellence and serve as role models for the SUNY community.