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Faculty Awards for Academic Outreach

The College of Arts and Sciences is soliciting nominations for the Faculty Awards for Academic Outreach, recognizing excellence in academic outreach during the past academic year by faculty in the departments and programs of the college. Faculty awards for academic outreach will be presented by the dean at the annual Faculty Awards Dinner.

Purpose

The Academic Outreach Awards recognize extraordinary contributions of faculty to the public that occur as an outgrowth of academic pursuits and are related to the university’s academic mission. The faculty awards are based on demonstrated outstanding contributions to the public stemming from their academic expertise.

Academic Outreach

Academic outreach is defined as integrated scholarship which engages the institution’s academic missions of research, creativity, teaching, and service with the community at large. It involves the university’s faculty and students employing their academic expertise to engage the community in reciprocal, collaborative relationships to improve the quality of life for citizens. In turn, the relationships with the community inform the scholarship and learning of faculty and students and supports university initiatives designed to enhance diversity and intercultural awareness.

Academic outreach cuts across the institutional mission; therefore, faculty may be nominated for excellence in academic outreach through outreach teaching (including courses with a service learning component), outreach research and creative activity, or outreach service.

Outreach teaching extends the university’s instructional capacity to provide learning opportunities to public audiences through workshops, public lectures, educational presentations to P-12 teachers and students, designing/developing educational exhibits, and other educational activities. Such teaching might employ innovative uses of information technologies to make university resources accessible to those at a distance through on-line courses or the design of educational websites.

Faculty may also perform outreach teaching by extending their classroom beyond the campus to engage their students in service learning. Through service learning, faculty design their course to enable their students to relate the academic content of their coursework to the real world by providing a needed service to the community as they apply and test their learning. Both service learning and student voluntary community service involve student engagement with the community; however, service learning differs from community service in that service learning experiences occur in the context of courses which are part of the approved curriculum and involve faculty and their students in a thoughtfully designed learning experience with defined learning and experiential goals as part of the course requirements.

Outreach research and creative activity involves extending faculty research and creative endeavors to serve the public at large. This goal may be accomplished through a variety of research activities: basic discovery research, applied or action research, original performances, and creative applied policy. Outreach research is often seen as an externally focused activity that brings together faculty and community collaborators to address real world problems and issues. Such collaboration, however, is only one of the ways in which outreach research can take place. Basic research and creative activity may also develop into outreach research, for their results may eventually be transmitted to an external audience or it may open a line of inquiry that benefits the public. Indeed, the best examples of outreach research and creative activities are those that engage faculty in advancing knowledge through the pursuit of their scholarly interests while simultaneously addressing community problems and issues, thereby benefiting the scholar, the discipline, the university, and society.

Outreach service entails employing faculty knowledge and professional expertise to serve society through application of expertise in direct service, consultation with public, private, and civic institutions of all kinds, and other activities which apply faculty knowledge to the benefit of the community. Through outreach service, the intellectual resources of the university’s faculty are applied to helping seek solutions to community problems and issues. As faculty knowledge provides insights which inform citizens of choices, provide needed services, and inform public decisions, faculty enhance the quality of life of the citizens in the communities served by the university.

Outreach service does not include:

  • institutional service (e.g., service on university committees),
  • professional service (e.g., service to various professional and learned societies), or
  • community  service (e.g., charitable service outside the faculty member’s academic expertise).

Rather, outreach service is defined more specifically as extending to the community faculty’s disciplinary expertise acquired through research, scholarship, and creative activity.

Eligibility

All full-time tenured and tenure track faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences are eligible forthis award. Adjunct faculty, instructors, and graduate teaching assistants are ineligible. Previous award recipients are ineligible for five years following their receipt of the award. The awards are intended to honor faculty who have exceeded normal expectations in their academic outreach activities and whose work has addressed a real community need through academic outreach.

Nominations of Faculty

Nominations will be solicited from department heads or directors. Please complete this nomination form. The letter of nomination should be limited to two typed, double-spaced pages. The letter should indicate whether the nominee is being nominated for outreach teaching, outreach research and creative activity or outreach service and should address the nature and quality of the academic outreach performed by the nominated individual and why it represents an extraordinary accomplishment that exceeds normal expectations for faculty. A copy of the faculty member’s current curriculum vitae should be attached to the letter of nomination. Nominators are asked not to include additional materials because they will NOT be considered.

Nominations should be submitted to Dean Theresa Lee no later than December 12 at 5:00 p.m.

Recipients

Year Recipient Department
2022 Research: Orou Gaoue
Research: Erin Hardin
Service: Nina Fefferman
Teaching: Lawrence Lee
Teaching: Illiana Rocha
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Psychology
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Physics & Astronomy
English
2021 Research: Monica Papes
Service: Helene Sinnreich
Teaching: Millie Gimmel
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Religious Studies
MFLL
2020 Research: Kimberly S. Sheldon
Research: Liem T. Tran
Service: Paul Armsworth
Service: Nicole Eggers
Teaching: Jessica M. Budke
Teaching: Katy L. Chiles
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Geography
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
History
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
English
2019 Teaching: Charlie Kwit
Service: Patrick Grzanka
Research: Annette Engel
History
Psychology
EPS
2018 Barry D. Bruce
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
Erin Darby
BCMB
History
Religious Studies
2017 Karen Lloyd
Julie Reed
Henri Grissino-Mayer
Microbiology
History
Geography
2016 Daniel Feller History
2015 Joe Miles Psychology
2014 B. Eugene Wofford
Lawrence Elledge
Gilya Schmidt
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Psychology
Religious Studies
2013 Nikolay Brodskiy
Jon Levin
Math
Physics and Astronomy
2012 Kristina Gordon
Marilyn Kallet
Christina Shepardson
Psychology
English
Religious Studies
2011 Marcia Goldenstein
Mike McKinney
Art
Earth & Planetary Sciences
2010 Stuart Elston
Larry Taylor
Physics & Astronomy
Earth & Planetary Sciences
2009 Jeffrey Kovac
Michael Lofaro
Chemistry
English
2008 Daniel Feller
Sally Horn
Norman Magden
Daniel Roberts
History
Geography
Art
Biochemistry & Cellular Molecular Biology
2007 Marvelene Moore
Suzanne Lenhart
Music
Mathematics
2006 Don Hough
Bob Bast
Music
History
2005 Stefanie Ohnesorg
Susan Riechert
Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
2004 Christopher P. Craig
William Wade III
Classics
Mathematics
2003 Robert Cunningham
Blake Robison
Political Science
Theatre
2002 Bruce Wheeler
Rosalind Gwynne
History
Religious Studies
2001 Lorri Glover
Jan Simek
History
Anthropology
2000 Jesse Poore
Arthur Echternacht
Computer Science
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
1999 Gordon Burghardt
Gary McCracken
Psychology
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
1998 Charles Faulkner
Anne McIntyre
Anthropology
Psychology
1997 Thomas Hood
Beth Mullin
Sociology
Botany
1996 Susan Martin
James Black
Classics
Sociology
1995 John Nolt
Jeffrey Mellor
Philosophy
Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures
1994 Marilyn Kallet
Susan Riechert
English
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
1993 William Lyons
Sheldon Cohen
Art
Earth & Planetary Sciences
1992 Sidney Jumper
Kathleen Lawler
Geography
Psychology
1991 Don Byerly
Gerald Vaughan
Geology
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
1990 Robert Gorman
Edward Clebsch
Political Science
Botany