Over the past year, both Paul and Patty Bell earned distinguished awards reserved for the most respected educators in their fields. Last March, Patty was honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with the National Science Foundation's Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. In November, Paul won the Pennock Distinguished Service Award for meritorious and outstanding achievement at Colorado State University.

After 31 years in elementary education, this year will be Patty's last as she will retire in June. But she says that won't keep her from teaching. "I'll continue to teach through the University of Northern Colorado's teacher preparation program and the SummerMath class that I have co-taught at Colorado State for years."

Paul is in his 28th year at CSU, where besides his teaching duties, he serves as university mediation officer, coordinator of the Applied Social Psychology Graduate Program and director of the Center on Aging. The center opened its doors three years ago. "Our goal is to integrate teaching, research and outreach related to aging," he says. "We have 25 faculty involved, taking on several research projects and developing workshops, such as on geriatric mental health."

The center recently received a million-dollar grant that will allow it to expand services to Alzheimer's families and patients in rural areas. Studying Alzheimer's has been an interest of Paul's since 1979, when his mother was diagnosed with the disease. He since has found that 25 other members of his family have suffered from Alzheimer's.

The couple met as students at Southwestern when Paul was a double major in psychology and sociology and Patty was an education major who starred on the theatrical stage in the role of Princess Winifred in Once Upon a Mattress. "The truth is that I always wanted to be in theatre, but there was no way to make a living," says Patty. "But the beauty of Southwestern was that non-majors could be a part of the cast and crew of shows."

In Fort Collins, Patty has acted in community and children's theatre and currently performs with two musical parody groups--"Moonlighting Teachers" and "The Mostlies." Still, she says teaching has remained the most rewarding part of her life and has never regretted her career choice.

In 1989, she was a Milken awardee, which annually recognizes two to four outstanding teachers and principals in each state. The award came with a $25,000 prize, a portion of which she used for a scholarship at Southwestern. This year she volunteered to be the University's 1972 class agent for The Austin Challenge, a fund-raising campaign for the classes of the 1970s.

Paul is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and Charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society. He believes his crowning professional achievement was sending a CSU graduate student, Professor of Psychology and Brown Distinguished Research Professor Jesse Purdy, to Southwestern in 1978. He says that they have stayed in Fort Collins for so long because "it's a wonderful place to live, having both of us well-employed and active in the community. And Southwestern hasn't offered me a job in more than 20 years!"

In his free time, Paul enjoys volunteering for the Alzheimer's Association, playing golf, walking 10 miles a day and watching over the two Canadian geese, Guy and Doll, who annually visit their lakeside home. Patty plans to use the freedom of her impending retirement to "perform more, travel more and make a dent in the pile of novels that's been stacking up beside the bed."