2007 FFF Southern Council Nomination

Teacher of the Year

Kevin Humphrey

The Northeast Arkansas Flyfishers would like to nominate Kevin Humphrey as Teacher of the Year. Kevin has been a long time member of the Northeast Arkansas Flyfishers and club president twice. Kevin is one of those unusual individuals who, although he has a demanding schedule in his professional life with Arkansas State University, Kevin always finds the time to volunteer for difficult and time consuming tasks with our club.

The following is a small list of Kevin’s accomplishments:

  • Assistant Professor, Teacher Educator, Arkansas State University
  • Assisted with an educational program teaching fly-casting and fly tying to intermediate level school children.
  • Designed, coordinated and continues to assist in teaching a program to help scouts in a local Boy Scout troop in Northeast Arkansas obtain their fly-fishing merit badge. These scouts were the first in the Northeast region to be awarded the merit badge.
  • Assisted with teaching equipment selection, safety, and casting to women during the "Women in the Outdoors" program sponsored by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and National Wild Turkey Foundation.
  • Assisted in teaching fly tying to the community during the Grand Opening of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Nature Center.
  • Taught free community clinics on fly-casting and assisted fly-tying classes during the National Fly Fishing week.
  • Coordinated and facilitated a program for our club (Northeast Arkansas Fly-Fishers) to introduce the Casting for Recovery program with guest speaker Kerri Russell.
  • Served as a "River Helper" at the 2005, 2006, and 2007 Arkansas Casting for Recovery Retreat.
  • Coordinated, demonstrated and taught fly tying at the club’s program titled "Fly Tiers Roundtable". This program is free to the public and offers fly tying instruction the last Saturday of February, March, April and May.
  • Northeast Arkansas Fly Fishers, Past President
  • Assisted tying flies for our club’s fly box contribution to the American Cancer Society’s Annual Gala Auction that takes place in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
  • Coordinated club member tiers and assisted in tying 300 flies that were placed in 15 fly boxes and contributed to the Casting for Recovery, Arkansas Retreat. He has done this since 2005.
  • Co-chaired, coordinated and taught the Young Angler’s program at the 2005 Federation of Fly Fishers Southern Council’s 2005 Conclave in Mountain Home, Arkansas.
  • Has taught a fly fishing course for credit at Arkansas State University.

In the past Kevin has been a volunteer at various sports shows at which our club participated. More recently, and more particularly, Kevin has been extensively involved with our club and on his own in promoting fly fishing and fly tying in schools that he services in his area. Kevin does this by conducting fly tying and fly casting lessons and, in addition to that, he has sponsored our club’s most recent Wayne E. and Catherine Moore Youth Day.

In previous years Kevin utilized the Southern Council equipment on a number of occasions to assist children in learning to become fly fishers and fly tyers. He was instrumental in our club purchasing rods/reels and fly tying tools/materials so that we could better meet the needs of local groups. This was especially true in helping a local scouting group in achieving their fly fishing badge. This purchase also helped us to work with the new Crowley’s Ridge Nature Center with several projects including a AG&FC Women in the Wilderness Workshop, which Kevin helped in coordinating the casting part of this workshop. Because of his continual efforts to instruct in the areas of fly fishing the Northeast Arkansas Flyfishers feel that Kevin would be a worthy recipient of TEACHER of the Year.

Dennis Reed
Secretary/Treasurer
Northeast Arkansas Flyfishers

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