Awards & Accolades
Faculty
Teaching Award Winners
Frederick Asher (art history) and Barbara Welke (history) received the 2005–06 Horace T. Morse–University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education. The award recognizes contributions to student learning through teaching, research, and creative activities; advising; academic program development; and educational leadership.
Photos by Patrick O'Leary
Richard Leppert (cultural studies and comparative literature) and Jean O’Brien-Kehoe (history) received the 2005–06 University of Minnesota Distinguished Teaching Award for Outstanding Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education.
Photos by Patrick O'Leary
Chris Uggen (sociology) has been named a 2006 Distinguished McKnight University Professor. The professorship honors and rewards the University’s highest-achieving faculty scholars.
Three CLA professors have been named McKnight Land-Grant Professors: Ronald R. Krebs (political science), who is studying the effects of war on democracy; Angus W. MacDonald III (psychology), who is building a comprehensive account of schizophrenia; and Steven M. Manson (geography), who is researching the nature, causes, and impacts of changing urban and rural landscapes. Manson also recently received the national Young Scholar Award from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.
Rob Silberman (art history) received the John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising in recognition of his dedication to working with film studies students.
R. Dennis Cook (statistics) received the 2006 CLA Dean’s Medal for distinguished contributions to his discipline and to the college. See the story on page 14.
Anna Clark (history) and Ray Gonzalez (English) were named 2006-09 Scholars of the College, an award that recognizes outstanding achievement by CLA faculty.
Jacquelyn Zita (women’s studies) and David Feinberg (art) received the 2006 University of Minnesota Outstanding Community Service Award. Zita is being honored for her work with the Women’s Environmental Institute at Amador Hill, an environmental research, renewal, and retreat center in North Branch, MN; and Feinberg for his work in the community-based ACTION project (Artist/Community Teams Interpret Oral Narratives) and for his work as project director for “Voice to Vision,” a DVD documentary of Holocaust survivors sharing their experiences through art.
Elaine Tyler May (American studies) received the Distinguished Women Scholars Award in Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities for 2006. This award recognizes scholarly or creative achievements, with emphasis on originality, imagination, and innovation.
Dance program director Carl Flink, affiliate Mathew Janczewski, and associate professor Joanie Smith, with her partner, affiliate Danial Shapiro, presented their original choreography in May at the prestigious American College Dance Festival Association’s (ACDFA) National College Dance Festival Gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Gary Schwitzer (journalism and mass communication) was awarded third place in the Association of Health Care Journalists 2005 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism in the category of trade publications/online journals/newsletters.
Josephine Lee (English, Asian American studies) was awarded a 2006 Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans Leadership Award for dedicated service to the community and for special contributions in leadership and mentoring.
For his outstanding contributions to vision research, Gordon Legge will receive an honorary doctorate in June—Doctorat Honoris Causea for l’École d’optométrie at the Université de Montréal. “It is certainly nice to be recognized by a Canadian university (my native land),” says Legge. “My only concern is delivering the convocation remarks in French!”
Mark Snyder (psychology) and his research collaborators received the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize for 2005–06 for their research on “Power and the Creation of Patronizing Environments: The Stereotype-Based Behaviors and their Effects on Female Performance in Masculine Domains,” a report of which appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The Department of Chicano Studies received a $171,000 grant from the Otto Bremer Foundation to support the development of a Minnesota Association of Latinos in Higher Education and an effort to improve media coverage and public dialogue on Latinos in Minnesota. Louis Mendoza (Chicano studies) is the principal investigator of the project, “Civic Engagement and the Minnesota Latino Community.”
Leonard Polakiewicz (Slavic languages and literatures) received the Ronald Walton Award from the National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages, in recognition of a career “distinguished by selfless service and noteworthy contributions to the fostering of less commonly taught language initiatives in the United States.”
Maki Morinaga (Asian languages and literatures) received the prestigious Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship Award for her project “Gender and Onnagata: A History, Mechanism and Labyrinth.”
Brian Goldberg (English) was selected by students to receive the Ruth Christie Distinguished Teaching Award. The award was endowed by Mr. and Mrs. Mark Wexler in memory of Ruth Christie, who taught in the Department of English from 1925 to 1957.
Michael Molasky (Asian languages and literatures) received the prestigious award of a Visiting Scholar at the Kyoto International Research Center for Japanese Studies for 2007–08.
Andrew Cohen (linguistics, English as a second language, and Slavic languages and literatures) received the 2006 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Award for Distinguished Service and Scholarship.
Barbara Weissberger (Spanish and Portuguese studies) received the 2006 La Corónica International Book Award for Scholarship in Medieval Spanish Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies for her book Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
Joachim Savelsberg (sociology) and Ryan D. King (’05, sociology) received the Law and Society Association’s 2006 Article Award for “Institutionalizing Collective Memories of Hate: Law and Law Enforcement in Germany and the United States” (in American Journal of Sociology). They collaborated through the U’s Graduate Research Partnership Program.
Toni Pierce Sands (affiliate, theatre arts and dance), and her husband Uri, have been named Artists of the Year by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ co-production (with TPT 17), “Armenian Genocide: 90 Years Later,” was awarded the Talk/Public Affairs Award from the Northwest Broadcast News Association.