Wagner College’s 2011 Faculty Awards Dinner was held Tuesday evening, Nov. 29, in the Faculty Dining Room. In addition to recognizing faculty members who had been granted tenure and promotion and those celebrating anniversaries, awards were given for teaching, scholarship and service. The winners of those awards were chosen in May by the Faculty Personnel Committee and endorsed by the previous provost, Devorah Lieberman. Awards were also given to recognize faculty for the promotion and support of diversity and internationalization.
Awards for Excellence in Teaching were given to four faculty members:
- Janice Buddensick, associate professor of accounting, was nominated by all the tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the Business Administration department. Buddensick has taught at some point in all three levels of learning communities that are part of the Wagner Plan, and she teaches a variety of courses at the undergraduate level as well as in all four business graduate programs. She is always well prepared, is able to impart material to her students, knows students by name and creates a positive classroom environment. Her Peer Evaluation Group said, in sum, “It is the emphatic opinion of the PEG that Professor Buddensick has attained an extraordinarily high level of effectiveness.”
- Alexa Dietrich, assistant professor of anthropology, was nominated by her department chairman, who wrote about his observations of her teaching performance since joining the Wagner faculty in 2007. “I was struck by the amount of preparation she puts in,” he wrote. “This permits her to present interesting and engaging lectures that intellectually challenge her students. Class participation on the days that I observed her was nearly 100%. Her most outstanding characteristic as a teacher is, I believe, her tremendous concern and empathy for her students. She not only knows every student by name in her courses, but knows them personally. … This caring attitude has a dramatic effect on class attendance and performance. Students show up on time, prepared and eager to participate. She is truly an extraordinary and positive role model.”
- Ann Hurley, professor of English, was nominated by a colleague who taught the English Department’s senior learning community with her. “Ann commands her students’ respect and admiration while maintaining a warm and supportive relationship with them,” the colleague wrote. “Whether for her upper-level or first-year courses, whether for Shakespeare or World Literature … the most frequently repeated comment on the narrative portion of [her student] evaluations was that Ann is ‘the best professor I have had at Wagner by far!’ We owe it to the students to honor Ann for her work with them.”
- Steven Snow, an associate professor of government and politics, was nominated by a Wagner faculty member from another department, who wrote, “Several days a week, I walk past Professor Snow’s classroom and am always struck by the verve and energy of his voice as he animatedly leads a discussion or lectures. … I often peek my head in just to see what in the world could be so exciting. I think I half expect to see someone juggling fire, and I always leave wishing I could be one of the students in his class that day.” In his case statement, Snow wrote, “If we want our students to work hard, we have to work hard. … It is more effort for us to assign multiple papers, give frequent quizzes, grade them using high standards, and then meet with unhappy students. But it is effective.”
Awards for Excellence in Scholarship were given to three faculty members:
- Erica Johnson, associate professor of English, was nominated by a junior colleague whose own scholarship had been inspired by her monograph on the notion of “home” in the writings of three expatriate authors, “Home, Maison, Casa: The Politics of Location in Works by Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Erminia Dell’Oro,” published in 2003 by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Her most recent book is “Caribbean Ghostwriting” (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), a study of Caribbean authors Michelle Cliff, Maryse Conde and Dionne Brand. She has co-edited a new collection of essays, entitled “Mortified: Representing Women’s Shame,” due for publication next year by Indiana University Press. Johnson was honored in 2009 with Wagner College’s Outstanding Teacher Award.
- Gordon McEwan, professor of anthropology, was nominated by one of his colleagues “due to the recent publication of yet another impressive book. … The fact is that few other academics contribute as consistently, with such high quality, to the scholarship of their chosen fields.” Professor McEwan wrote in his case statement: “For the past 17 years, I have directed the Selz Foundation Archaeological Excavations at Choquepukio in Cuzco, Peru. This work represents the largest, longest running and most extensive archaeological excavation ever carried out in the Inca heartland.” Considered an expert on several Andean cultures that preceded the creation of the Inca Empire, McEwan’s next book is expected to document the direct connection between the Tiwanaku and Wari empires and the genesis of the Inca.
- John Moran, professor of law, was nominated by all the tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the Business Administration department. “Dr. Moran has never nominated himself during his tenure at Wagner,” they wrote, “and it is our belief that his body of scholarly work merits recognition.” Their nomination cited Moran’s two textbooks, both published by Prentice-Hall, the largest textbook publisher in the country: “Practical Business Law” (1984, 1989, 1995) and “Employment Law” (1997, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2011), both in very wide use.
Awards for Excellence in Service were given to three faculty members:
- Frank DeSimone, an assistant professor of marketing, has served as his department’s representative to the committees coordinating all three levels of the Wagner Plan curriculum: the First-Year, Intermediate and Senior programs. He has spearheaded civic engagement within the department, with many of his classes incorporating components that require students to serve in the community. He developed the Business Department’s Marketing Incubator program, where students serve as consultants to startup businesses and nonprofits. As faculty adviser to the Marketing Club, he was the architect of the club’s annual Halloween Haunted House. Professor DeSimone was nominated by the Department of Business Administration, which noted that he first “engaged in most of the above-mentioned activities while he was a visiting professor, before he was placed on the tenure track.”
- Sarah Donovan, an associate professor of philosophy, has served the college in many capacities: Academic Honesty Committee (2 years as chair), faculty coordinator for the First-Year Program, co-organizer of the New American Colleges & Universities conference at Wagner College in 2010, director of Gender Studies, Pre-Health Committee, Human Experimental Review Board, Library Committee, Feminist Caucus, Gender Studies Committee, co-coordinator of the Humanities Seminar, co-editor of the Faculty Newsletter, and frequent presenter to parents of prospective students attending Campus Visit Days. “I firmly believe that a faculty member should contribute to the general running of the college, and I have maintained that philosophy since joining the faculty in 2003,” Professor Donovan said in her case statement. “Further, I expect to always serve the college because of my commitment to this belief.”
- Nicholas Richardson, an associate professor of chemistry, has logged a wide variety of service experiences since first winning this award in 2004: Faculty Personnel Committee (chair for 2 years), Middle States Accreditation Subcommittee 3 (chair), First-Year Program coordinator, faculty grants coordinator, Priorities & Budget Committee (chair for 1 year), Pre-Health Committee (chair several times), faculty representative to the college’s board of trustees, and service on various ad hoc committees.
The Adjunct Exceptional Performance Award went to Stephen Nutt. For more than 30 years, Steve Nutt has taught four or five ceramics courses a year, single-handedly overseeing the ceramics studio and mentoring many students interested in this craft art. Nutt has also presented ceramics workshops for several art history classes; his expert knowledge of ceramics in ancient Greece has been especially valuable. Professor Nutt was nominated by the entire full-time faculty of the Art Department.
The Internationalization Action Council presented awards to two faculty members:
- Frank Calvosa, an adjunct marketing professor in our MBA program, was nominated by several students and faculty members for the Internationalization award. One of the students wrote, “He speaks confidently from the perspective of a veteran marketer with a career in the international arena. The content of every class is always a combination of key concepts from the course text and current world events. As a result, his students incorporate current, global events into their course work and papers. He impressed upon us the value of having a global perspective on the world, and an enthusiasm reading, researching and staying abreast of international affairs.”
- Steven Snow, an associate professor in our Department of Government & Politics. For the last 4 years, Snow has led a group of students on a service-learning experience in the slums on the southernmost edge of metropolitan Nairobi, Kenya. One of the students joining Professor Snow on one of these journeys nominated him for the Internationalization award, saying, “The reason why I am nominating this professor is because he has changed lives — not only abroad, but in our back yard. Students who go on one of these trips begin to see how they are different themselves, and they begin to perceive the world through a different lens — to see themselves through a different lens.”
The Diversity Action Council presented awards to two faculty members:
- Heidi Lopez is an adjunct sociology professor who teaches the “Race & Ethnic Relations” course. She was nominated for this award by two students, who cited her as an example of someone who “walks what they talk.” Her students said that Professor Lopez works tirelessly to create an environment wherein her students can freely discuss issues once considered taboo. A social worker and advocate for race and ethnic issues, Lopez helps people gain the confidence to tell their story. In addition to teaching at Wagner, she coordinates the Single Stop program at Kingsborough Community College.
- Rita Reynolds, an assistant professor of history, has been developing a range of courses that examine American diversity, including the two-semester African-American history sequence and an upper-level course on the Civil Rights movement. In the four years she has been at Wagner, more than 500 students have benefited from these new options for study. In addition, Reynolds has personally mentored many students, both African-American and Caucasian, in dealing with race issues on our campus. She is also an excellent role model, pursuing and presenting her scholarship on the strong traditions of free blacks in North Carolina. She has also engaged in oral history work on the civil rights movement on Staten Island, including the work of the “Black Angels,” black nurses from the South who came to Staten Island in the 1920s to work at local tuberculosis hospitals. She is an exemplary colleague, teacher, scholar and citizen.