03-07-09 Awards

Dear Friends of the College:

 A major thrust of Vision 2020 is the creation of a “culture of excellence” at Texas A&M University.  Creating such a culture requires personal commitments and notable achievements by students, faculty, and staff. 

 I am very pleased to tell you that many individuals in the College furthered the creation of a culture of excellence in Liberal Arts during the past year.  Their accomplishments set new standards for us all, and for that reason I thought you would welcome a brief overview of students, faculty, and staff who received awards for their excellence during 2002-03.

Graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPR as an English/history double major, Erin Fleming received the Brown-Rudder Award at the spring commencement ceremony.  The Brown-Rudder award is the highest honor Texas A&M can bestow on a graduating senior.  In making the award, President Gates noted her leadership at the University, and described her as active, energetic, talented, articulate, creative, insightful, and, above all, gracious and modest.  Fleming also received recognition for her senior honors thesis and was awarded the Buck Weirus Spirit Award in April of this year for her contributions to campus life.  Fleming held multiple scholarships while attending Texas A&M, including the prestigious President’s Endowed Scholarship.

 Also, receiving noteworthy recognition was Brodus Franklin, a senior psychology major, who accepted the Reginald Broadus Award from the MSC Black Awareness Committee.  Brodus was praised for his involvement in student government and numerous campus organizations and his service as a mentor to elementary school children. He plans to attend medical school following graduation.  This year’s Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Junior was Maya Weilundemo.  Maya is an English major in the creative writing track with a 4.0 GPR.  She is a National Merit scholar and a President’s Endowed Scholar.  Already an award-winning writer, Maya served as editor of Agora, the online undergraduate research journal for the humanities, as well as in several other student literary organizations.  She volunteered in civic organizations targeted to aiding senior adults and to addressing women’s issues.

 Among our graduate students, several received Association of Former Students Research Awards – Debbie S. Cunningham (Modern and Classical Languages), Susan I. Dummer (Communication), Joel R. Philo (Psychology), Kevin J. Real (Communication) and Lingui Yang (English).  Suzanne Bell (psychology) received her second Association of Former Students Teaching Award. 

 Additionally, the American Psychological Association awarded Cortney Warren, a second year doctoral student, a Fellowship in Minority Mental Health Research and Substance Abuse for 2002-03.  Warren’s work addresses how children from ethnic minority groups cope with the mental health challenges posed by poverty and other risk factors. 

 Many, many of our faculty are well known for their dedication as outstanding teachers.  This spring, President Gates recognized one the College’s best, Professor Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., with the inaugural award for teaching achievement that bestowed the title of “Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence.”  A $25,000 award accompanies this title – the largest award in the nation for exceptional teaching. 

 The Association of Former Students selected two Liberal Arts faculty members for its Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching – Professors James Aune (Communication) and Jimmie Killingsworth (English) – and two for its Distinguished Achievement Awards in Research – Professors Kenneth Meier (Political Science) and Jeffry Simpson (Psychology). That brings to 59 the number of liberal arts faculty who, since 1975, have won AFS Distinguished Achievement Awards for either teaching or research. 

 Several faculty received prestigious awards from off-campus organizations that underscore their many accomplishments.  English Professor Margaret Ezell and History Professor Brian Linn were recipients of John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships for 2003-04. Ezell is the second Texas A&M English professor to win this award.  Last year Jerome Loving received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on his biography of Theodore Dreiser.  Ezell will use her Fellowship to finish work on the 1645-1714 volume for the new Oxford English Literary History series entitled 1645‑1714:  Authors, Readers, and Literary Life.  Linn will use his Fellowship to research and draft a book entitled War in American Military Thought.  This book will explore how American military intellectuals have conceptualized past, present, and future armed conflict, and how these beliefs have shaped both peacetime defense policy and the conduct of war.

 Three history faculty members received nationally competitive awards to support their scholarly projects.  Professor Daniel Bornstein received a residential fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, which will allow him to spend 2003-04 writing his book An Italian Church:  Religion, Culture, and Society in Late Medieval Cortona.  Assistant Professor Leor Halevi was awarded the Library of Congress Fellowship in International Studies by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to support his research on a study of seventh century Islam.  Professor Walter Kamphoefner received a Sabbatical Fellowship for the Humanities and Social Sciences from the American Philosophical Society for 2003-04. Kamphoefner will use the fellowship to continue work on a study of the movement of emigrants from Hannover, Germany, across the entire United States, using computerized emigration files from Staatsarchiv Osnabrück and nationwide U.S. manuscript census indexes.

 In the area of creative artistic work, Music Professor and Performance Studies Department Head Peter Lieuwen received the Pacific Symphony Orchestra’s 25th anniversary commission to compose a new

work commemorating the centennial of flight.  Music Assistant Professor David F. Wilborn won the Fifth Biennial Allen E. Ostrander Trombone Composition Prize for an original composition titled “Excursions for 6 Trombones.” The purpose of the contest is to further encourage the composition and performance of the highest quality trombone ensemble repertoire.

 Among our leading researchers, the behavioral neuroscience area in psychology has been especially productive in garnering research funding for projects, to the tune of 6.6 million dollars.  The faculty who deserve mention for this effort are Antonio Cepeda-Benito, Jim Grau, Mary Meagher, Jack Nation, and Mark Packard.  These awards are indicators as to the timeliness of their research and provide psychology graduate students with outstanding research and training opportunities.  Even better is the leading edge knowledge that then gets translated into information shared in the classroom with all Aggie students.

 The international recognition of Texas A&M received a boost with Spanish Professor Eduardo Urbina’s appointment as the co-chair of the Cervantes Chair at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain (UCLM), effective in November 2002. Urbina was also named permanent visiting professor at the university. These appointments are a result of a Memorandum of Agreement signed in October 2002 between the UCLM and Texas A&M.

 I am especially pleased to tell you that the College’s communication’s activities directed by Leanne South won two Brazos Bravo awards.  Brazos Bravo is the communication awards competition sponsored by the Brazos Valley chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, which also was recently selected as IABC’s International Chapter of the Year.  The College’s magazine Pathways to Discovery earned an Award of Achievement in the annual report category.  Our cornerstone college identity materials (banners, tri-folder with insert shells and postcard shells) won a Brazos Bravo in the category for logo, organizational identity. 

 This past year has been an outstanding one for Texas A&M University and for the College of Liberal Arts.  The achievements recognized by these awards demonstrate well the quality of our students, faculty and staff.  Our aim, of course, and the aim of building a culture of excellence, is to make such achievements routine, and the awards even more numerous.  For virtually every award winner, endowed professorships, fellowships, and scholarships or other philanthropic funds joined with University funding to make their achievements possible.  On behalf of all of this year’s award winners, thank you for your support as we create a culture of excellence in the College of Liberal Arts. 

 Best wishes for a safe and enjoyable summer.

 Sincerely, 

Charles A. Johnson

Dean