The annual Dean’s Exceptional Service Awards and Scholarly Achievement awards were announced at the May 1 faculty meeting by Interim Dean of Faculty Margaret Gentry. Award descriptions and a list of previous recipients can be found on the Dean of Faculty site.
The Exceptional Service Awards are made in two categories, Career Achievement and Notable Year Achievement.
Rob Hopkins
Career Achievement Award
Gentry said Associate Professor of Music Rob Hopkins Hopkins “has dedicated a significant part of his career serving Hamilton in a variety of major capacities since he first came to the college in 1983 and took on his first service as a faculty resident in Babbit.”
Hopkins has been acting chair and chair of his department, Associate Dean of Students for Academic Affairs, Faculty Secretary, served three times on the Committee on Academic Policy, has been a member at one time or other on almost every campus-wide committee, and also participated in or chaired a host of ad hoc committees including recent stints on the Advising Assessment Committee and Long-term Planning Committee, Gentry noted.
As one nominator wrote, “[He] runs a tight ship as chair of a committee… He understands that time is a precious commodity to faculty and ensures that committee meetings are efficient and productive.”
Karen Brewer
Notable Year Achievement Award
In the past year, Karen Brewer served on the Budget Committee, Committee on Academic Standing, HEOP Advisory Board; she was a member of the JED Team and the Bias Incident Response team and chaired the Dean of Students search committee. A colleague wrote, “She has led the charge in developing innovative curricular and cultural changes across the College that are meaningful to our students; most notably by chairing CAP’s subcommittee on our new SSIH requirement.”
As a member of the Budget Committee, Brewer shepherded the caregiving leave policy through the committee and faculty process. Her work extends beyond formal service, as one of her colleagues indicates: “Unofficially, she has acted as a caring ‘campus mom’ for many of our students by routinely hosting student dinners at her house; lodging a visiting, former student; or counseling distressed students in her office - she always has tissues and chocolate on hand!”
Tina Hall
Notable Year Achievement Award
Tina Hall “does more than anyone’s idea of her fair share service,” according to Department Chair Margaret Thickstun. Hall coordinated the College-wide writing prizes, served on a search committee, and coordinated the visit of outside writers and internal faculty talks. At the college level, she served on the CAP subcommittee on long-term curricular planning, on the Levitt Council, and on the DHi advisory committee.
“Perhaps her greatest contribution to the college last year, however, was her service as chair of the Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Board. The cost of the time and emotional energy that chairing HSMB takes is enormous, and she does it with discretion, fairness, integrity, attention to process, patience, and kindness,” said Gentry.
Dan Chambliss
Career Achievement Award
Gentry said Professor of Sociology Dan Chambliss “started his distinguished career by winning his professional society’s award for his dissertation in medical sociology.” Since then, he has written four books and numerous articles. His book Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers received the U.S. Olympic Committee Book of the Year Prize; another book, Beyond Caring: Hospitals, Nurses, and the Social Organizations of Ethics, received the Eliot Friedson Prize of the American Sociological Association.
Chambliss’ latest book, How College Works, written with Christopher Takacs ‘05 received the Stone Prize from Harvard as outstanding book of the year on education and the Contributions to Scholarship Prize of ASA; it was a featured selection of The Chronicle of Higher Education, and listed on the reading lists of The Washington Post and Inside Higher Education.
Chambliss has taken his intellectual work out into the public domain, appearing on many radio and TV programs as well as given numerous academic addresses and lectures, said Gentry. He has served as a consultant to many colleges and universities and is active in ASA governance. “He shines as a teacher, mentor, and educator as well as a scholar,” she said.
Sally Cockburn
Notable Year Achievement Award
Sally Cockburn’s scholarly work last year spanned a spectrum of topics theoretical, pedagogical, and applied, said Gentry. She published three single-author publications including two peer-reviewed journal articles on preimages of geometric paths and a chapter on the philosophical foundations of mathematics in an edited volume.
Her applied work included development of an educational module on graph theory that models vulnerabilities in the power grid and, with a Hamilton math concentrator, Cockburn designed and implemented a program to optimize placement of incoming students into adventure orientation trips. And this is on top of chairing the math department, serving on three committees, and teaching five courses with a total of 100 students, Gentry added.
John McEnroe
Notable Year Achievement Award
John McEnroe spent his sabbatical year as a senior associate member of the prestigious American School of Classical Studies at Athens, serving in the role of the distinguished Elizabeth A. Whitehead Visiting Professor during the spring of 2017. The graduate seminar he presented drew on his internationally acknowledged expertise on the architecture of communities in ancient Crete. The work from his leave on the excavations at Bronze Age town of Gournia, which his colleague called “the most ambitious 3-D modeling project ever undertaken for an ancient site in the Mediterranean,” has already resulted in numerous journal articles and book chapters.
Throughout his sabbatical year, he also participated in international Seminars at British School of Archaeology at Athens, Canadian Institute in Greece, French School at Athens, Archaeological Society of Greece, Swedish School at Athens, Italian School at Athens, and more.
Xavier Tubau
Early Career Achievement Award
Gentry said Xavier Tubau brought an impressive record of scholarship on Spanish literature and culture during the 16th and 17th centuries to Hamilton when he arrived, and has built significantly upon it during his three years here.
He is the sole author of two books and co-author of another. Tubau has recent articles in four edited collections as well as numerous book chapters, journal articles, and reviews. He publishes both in Spanish and English giving Hamilton College great visibility both in American academics and abroad. Tubau's departmental colleagues write that he is a committed, engaged scholar; a prolific writer; a talented teacher; and a collegial colleague, Gentry said.
