Samford University exercise science and sports medicine (ESSM) professor Charles D. Sands IV has received the school’s 2006 Buchanan Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching. Sands, who has served as ESSM department chair since 2004, was recognized during the opening convocation of the fall semester Aug. 29.
Candidates for the award, one of Samford’s top faculty honors, are nominated by members of last spring’s graduating class. A 1993 Samford graduate, Sands holds a master’s degree in sport administration and a doctorate in public health, both from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sands has held teaching posts at Samford since 1994, when he worked as a graduate assistant. He joined the faculty full time in 1999. He is a former manager of the fitness and wellness center at St. Vincent’s Hospital’s Bruno Rehabilitation Center.
During the Buchanan Award presentation, Sands was cited for his volunteer service in Perry County, where he has initiated health screenings and weight-management programs, and in China, where he has led research in solutions to childhood obesity. Sands and his wife, Jennifer, have four children. They are active at Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Birmingham, where he is a Sunday School teacher and ordained deacon. He was raised in South Korea, where his parents, Elizabeth and Charles D. Sands III, were longtime Southern Baptist missionaries.
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