James Bitter, Ed.D., has been named the 2020 Idaho State University Professional Achievement Award recipient in the College of Health Professions. He is a 1975 graduate with a Doctor of Education degree in Counselor Education.

Bitter works as a Professor of Counseling and Human Services at East Tennessee State University. He is a Diplomate in Adlerian Psychology (NASAP, 2002), and the former Editor of the Journal of Individual Psychology. He is past President of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology (NASAP), a position he held from 2016-2018.

Bitter is the author or co-author of 4 books. He has also authored more than seventy journal articles, chapters, and videotapes. He is the featured master therapist on the video for Adlerian family therapy on the Psychotherapy.net series Family Therapy with the Experts. Bitter has participated in establishing and supporting five family education centers in the United States, and contributing to the development of another five throughout the world. He is an international trainer in Adlerian psychotherapy, and he has conducted workshops and training programs in England, Ireland, Korea, Malta, Peru, Slovenia, and Romania, to name a few.

He has been married to Anita Lynn Williams for 37 years; they have two daughters.

Lynda Tanner has been selected as the 2020 Idaho State University Professional Achievement Award recipient for the College of Nursing. Tanner is twice a graduate of ISU, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1980 and a Master’s of Science in Nursing Administration in 1999.

Tanner is President and CEO of VNA Health, an organization of more than 370 employees providing hospice, home health and palliative and personal care services to more than 12,000 people across Santa Barbara County in California. She has more than 30 years’ experience working in homecare, including working as a consultant and a surveyor for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and as Chief Clinical Executive at Sutter VNA and Hospice. In 2017, the Pacific Coast Business Times named Tanner the "Grand Champion of Healthcare." Through her diligent work VNA Health achieved the prestigious and difficult to attain, Level 4 of the We Honor Veterans, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Ms. Tanner is active in many professional, service, business and community organizations and currently serves as: Chair of the PAPA Committee on the Board of Directors for California Association for Health Services at Home (CAHSAH); Finance Officer on the Board of Directors for CenCal Health; Member of the Council of Leaders for the Alliance for Living and Dying Well; and Chair of the Audit/Compliance Committee for the Board of Directors for Casa Dorinda.

Her daughter, Shawna Thomas, would have been in the same graduation receiving her doctorate degree for NP. Lynda says: "The whole idea that we would have been in the same graduation exactly 40 years following my graduation was a dream come true." 

Dr. Nicole Chopski has been selected as the 2020 Idaho State University Professional Achievement Award recipient for the College of Pharmacy.

Chopski received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from ISU in 1997. Upon choosing to attend Idaho State University, Chopski was awarded a Kasiska health scholarship, made possible by generous contributions to ISU from the Kasiska family. The Kasiska Division of Health Sciences now carries that name in honor of the immense support from the family spanning several decades.

Chopski currently serves as the Executive Director of the Idaho State Board of Pharmacy. She is certified as an authorized nuclear pharmacist, recognized by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for more than a decade, and partnered to open Advanced Isotopes of Idaho, an independent nuclear pharmacy. Prior to her current position, Chopski was a staff pharmacist at Portneuf Medical Center.

Outside of pharmacy, her interests include riding her Harley Davidson motorcycle, traveling and serving the POW*MIA Awareness Association locally and National League of POW/MIA Families nationally.Dr. Chopski is active in several organizations, including the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), where she served on many of the Association’s committees and as a past voting delegate at the NABP Annual Meetings. She is also a member of the Southeast Idaho Medical Reserve Corps, and the Southeastern Idaho Pharmaceutical Association, and has earned a number of certifications related to pharmacy practice from the American Pharmacists Association. She is also an active member of the ISU College of Pharmacy Dean’s Advisory Council.

Dr. Stacy Shumway Manwaring has been named the recipient of the 2020 Idaho State University Professional Achievement Award in the College of Rehabilitation and Communication Sciences. She received her Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology from ISU in 2000.

Manwaring is currently an associate professor and Director of the Early Childhood Communication Lab in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Utah. In addition to teaching, she conducts research aimed at increasing understanding of the developmental course of social communication and language delays in young children with or at-risk for autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Manwaring aims to produce research that is relevant and readily translatable to clinical practice. She presents her work regularly at national and international conferences, and she has several peer-reviewed publications as well as book chapters on this topic.

Prior to her arrival at ISU Manwaring received her B.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from Brigham Young. After receiving her degree from Idaho State University, she practiced as a speech-language pathologist for 2 years before attending Florida State University, where she completed her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders in 2006. Dr. Manwaring joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 2011, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Pediatrics and Developmental Neuroscience Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland.