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Chris Fasano |
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Ira Smolensky |
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Ken Cramer |
With the announcement of
the recipient of the 2008 Hatch Award for Distinguished Teaching at the
President’s Homecoming Gala, Monmouth College has now named all three
recipients of this year’s Hatch Academic Excellence Awards.
Funded by 1957 graduate
W. Jerome Hatch, the awards were established
in 2004 to recognize outstanding work by MC faculty in the areas of
teaching, scholarship and service. Through cash stipends, they honor
faculty who have excelled in their academic disciplines and who have
served as an inspiration to both their students and their colleagues.
The Distinguished Teaching Award winner
announced last week was Ira Smolensky, professor of political science,
who joined the faculty in 1984. Earlier this fall, biology professor Ken
Cramer was named the recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship and
Research Award, while physics professor Chris Fasano received the
Distinguished Service Award. Cramer joined Monmouth’s faculty in 1993,
five years prior to Fasano.
For the first time, nominations for the
Distinguished Teaching Award were solicited exclusively from alumni. The
award recognizes outstanding effectiveness in teaching by engaging
students in learning and helping them connect their learning to lives of
service dedicated to the public good. Recipients are uniquely able to
engage students in their courses and build relationships with them that
go beyond the classroom. They serve as models and mentors for students,
helping them to achieve their highest potential as students and
citizens.
“Much of
what teachers do is unseen and unsung,” said Monmouth College’s vice
president for academic affairs, Jane Jakoubek. “But when alumni have a
chance to talk about the teacher who made a difference in their lives,
they have no trouble coming forward with their stories.”
Wrote one alumni nominator, “(Smolensky)
saw something in me that I was not, at the time, able to express, and he
drew it out of me over the course of my Monmouth career … His impact on
my education at Monmouth will forever enhance the way in which I
understand my experiences in this world.”
The Hatch Award for Distinguished Service
is awarded to “individuals and groups that do especially noteworthy work
for the institution.” In a nominating letter, Fasano was praised both
for the quality of his service – described as “exceptional” and as
“demonstrating the highest professionalism” – and his quantity of
service. Fasano has provided support for students, faculty colleagues
and the institution in ways large and small, including chairing faculty
senate, the grievance committee and the physics department. He has often
been the face of the faculty at public events, presenting to the
Monmouth Associates, the college’s trustees, at other ACM colleges and
to local school districts. Perhaps most visibly, he has organized the
college’s faculty colloquium series, created a cutting-edge computing
network and coordinated the college’s Introduction to Liberal Arts
program.
Criteria
for the Distinguished Scholarship and Research Award include:
participating in faculty-student research projects leading to
publication; pedagogical research to improve classroom teaching;
creative activity that explains the research; and traditional research
in peer-reviewed journals.
Cramer’s well-documented research on the
brown recluse spider was the leading factor in his winning nomination.
Sometimes dubbed “Spider Man,” Cramer has conducted extensive research
on the climate conditions that the poisonous spider can tolerate and
mapped out the northernmost line in Illinois that corresponds with that
tolerance. A student, Alex Maywright, also contributed to Cramer’s
published research.
