The Crystal Apple Award is a teaching award often presented to full-time professors, but this year adjunct professor Sarah Pollock was given the award.

Despite being a part-time instructor, she has been teaching at Cosumnes River College for a long time.

Pollock, a biology professor, said that this year the award nomination process, through the California Academic Senate, decided that the four different districts in the state would nominate two district adjunct professors and the other two would continue to nominate full-time professors.

“I think they’re going to flip-flop the four different areas in the state in the next couple of years,” Pollock said. “This was the first year that an adjunct professor was allowed to be nominated on campus and this was award was purely for adjuncts.”

Pollock went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and majored in general engineering. She received her graduate degree at University California Davis and majored in biomedical engineering.

“I’ve done a lot of engineering and a lot of biology, a lot of science,” Pollock said. “I’ve worked a couple of research projects before coming here, which have been really fun trying to build devices to assist the human body.”

Interim Dean Brandon Muranaka said that Pollock teaches anatomy and physiology courses and has been doing so for a number of years.

“From what I’ve heard, being interim and sort of new, she is a great teacher and an excellent adjunct,” Muranaka said. “I know she has done some programs, like she has a ‘cadaver day’ where she comes in and brings in some high school students to see our cadaver lab.”

Avneet Khinda, a 19-year-old nursing major, said that she thinks that Pollock is a good professor and explains the material well.

”She does all of her lecture and I like the way she does it because if you’re stuck on something, she’ll explain it clearly about what she wants us to know, it’s so easy to understand her,” Khinda said. “She’s a good professor and if someone wants to take a bio class, you should take her as your professor.”

Pollock said that she has been teaching at CRC consistently for eight years, and she has also taught at other campuses around the area, ranging from University of Phoenix, The Art Institute and at California State University of Sacramento.

“I really enjoy being here at CRC,” Pollock said. “I love the chance to get to work with my students. I have a lot of fun and I just appreciate the chance to be here and teach.”