The University of Virginia’s School of Medicine has received the 2015 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, marking the fourth year it has been so honored.
As a recipient of the annual award – a national honor recognizing U.S. colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion – the school will be featured, along with 91 other recipients, in the November issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.
“We want to ensure that diversity is more than a buzzword, and that our culture actually reflects the values of inclusion and fairness,” said Dr. Greg Townsend, associate dean for diversity. “All of us at the School of Medicine – students, faculty, trainees and staff alike – are part of that process. Together, we are building a community in which differences of every kind – gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and beyond – are not only valued, but seen as a means to excellence.”
The award honors the school’s efforts at creating diverse hiring pools and performing community outreach, Townsend said.
The award’s application process includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees, continued leadership support for diversity and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion, said Lenore Pearlstein, the magazine’s publisher. “Our standards are high, and we look for institutions where diversity and inclusion are woven into the work being accomplished every day across a campus,” she said.
Batten School’s Craig Volden Wins Three Political Science Awards
Craig Volden, associate dean of academic affairs and a professor in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, received three major awards at the American Political Science Association’s 11th annual meeting, held Sept. 3-6 in San Francisco.
Volden received the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award, the Richard F. Fenno Jr. Prize and the Gladys M. Kammerer Award. The Elazar Award recognizes a single scholar with “distinguished scholarly contributions to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations.” The Fenno Prize is awarded to the best book in legislative studies published in the previous year. The Kammerer Award is for the best political science publication in the previous calendar year in the field of U.S. national policy.
“It’s exciting to have received these awards,” said Volden. “The legislative studies award was particularly significant because both my adviser from graduate school and [co-author] Alan’s [Wiseman] adviser from graduate school received the award previously. Our names are now on the same plaque as theirs.”
In the past year, Volden and Wiseman published “Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers.” The book explores the effectiveness of individual members of Congress in overcoming policy gridlock.
Volden’s most prominent work on issues of federalism focuses on why some policies diffuse across states and localities while others do not.
Syllabus Study Garners Research Award
Michael Palmer, associate director of the former Teaching Resource Center – now the Center for Teaching Excellence– and colleagues Lindsay Wheeler and Itiya Aneece recently won the 2015 Robert J. Menges Award for Outstanding Research in Educational Development from the Professional & Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.
Wheeler is formerly a graduate student in the Curry School of Education and currently a lecturer in chemistry, and Aneece is a graduate student in environmental sciences.
The network selected their proposal, “Not Your Granddaddy’s Syllabus: Investigating Student Perceptions of Course Syllabi,” as the sole winner of this year’s award, though the group customarily makes two awards each year. It will be presented in November at the group’s annual conference in San Francisco.
The study investigated student reactions to two different kinds of syllabi: a traditional “content-focused” syllabus, and a redesigned, “learning-focused” syllabus.
“When students read a learning-focused syllabus, they have significantly more positive perceptions of the document itself, the course described by the syllabus and the instructor associated with the course,” the researchers concluded. “Both the quantitative and qualitative data clearly suggest that an instructor has very little to lose by creating a learning-focused syllabus. In fact, they have much to gain.”
Architecture School’s Jeana Ripple Honored as ‘Emerging Faculty’
Assistant Professor of Architecture Jeana Ripple has received the 2015 Emerging Faculty Award from the Building Technology Educators’ Society. The award is granted every other year to recognize excellence and innovation in teaching during the formative years in building technology education.
The award was presented in June during the organization’s conference in Utah. Ripple presented her teaching portfolio during the award-winners’ session and her research practice, Ripple Architecture Studio, at the conference’s closing panel.
This spring, Ripple was awarded the 2015 ACSA|AIAS New Faculty Teaching Award.
Her teaching pushes building technology into the foreground of design experimentation. Her courses extend the building technology curriculum by utilizing experimental performance-simulation software, full-scale material mockups and input from engineers and industry experts.
CLIR Appoints Michael F. Suarez Distinguished Presidential Fellow
The Council on Library and Information Resources has appointed Michael F. Suarez, University Professor of English and director of the Rare Book School, as a Distinguished Presidential Fellow.
Suarez leads the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography and is also honorary curator of the University’s special collections. In July, President Obama nominated him to the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
As a presidential fellow, Suarez will provide expert counsel and strategic advice for the council’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives program and its postdoctoral fellowship program.
Suarez is co-editor of “The Oxford Companion to the Book” (2010), a million-word reference work on the history of manuscripts, books and born-digital materials from the invention of writing to the present day. He co-edited two books published in 2014: “The Book: A Global History,” with H. R. Woudhuysen, and a scholarly edition of “The Dublin Notebook of Gerard Manley Hopkins,” with L.J. Higgins. A Jesuit priest, Suarez is currently co-general editor of “The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins” and editor-in-chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online.
The Council on Library and Information Resources awards distinguished presidential fellowships to individuals who have achieved a high level of professional distinction in their fields and are working in areas of interest to the council and the Digital Library Federation.
U.Va.’s China Rep Profiled
Justin O’Jack, director of U.Va.’s China Office, was recently profiled for the second volume of a book series, “Americans in Shanghai,” published by the Shanghai Institute of American Studies. O’Jack leads U.Va.’s first overseas office, established to extend the University’s presence in China.
He gave the keynote address at the book’s recent launch event in Shanghai.
