Commencement 2008

Commencement 2008

Commencement Services

UMass Boston Chancellor Announces Distinguished Service, Teaching and Scholarship Award winners

Boston Mass.—Chancellor J. Keith Motley has announced the 2008 winners of the Distinguished Service, Teaching, and Scholarship Awards, which recognize faculty members for their work both inside and outside of the classroom. Each of the recipients has been endowed with the creativity and the ability to foster independent thinking in both their students and fellow professors. They have taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses and have successfully created partnerships with other disciplines both within and outside the university. These awards will be given away at the University's 40th Commencement celebrations on Friday May 30th 2008 on the Campus Center Lawn.

"UMass Boston is built on the strength and the effort of our excellent faculty, and I am honored to be presenting this year's awards to members of the faculty who have taken teaching to new levels," said Chancellor Motley. "Each year, through the process of nominations for these awards, the achievements of many faculty members are brought out into the open. This is a testament to UMass Boston being among the best public research universities in the country, whose commitment to urban education has remained unmatched."

"The committees had a difficult time deciding on their recommendations for each of the Chancellor's Distinguished Awards, and I can see why: we have so many exceptional faculty members here at UMass Boston," said Provost Paul Fonteyn. "These awards are one of the ways that we can acknowledge the outstanding faculty members at UMass Boston, and in doing so, inspire others as well."

Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Service

The commitment to service shown by Professor Robert Crossley over his 36 years at UMass Boston can best be described as "transformative." Professor Crossley served as chair of the English Department at UMass Boston for 11 years, during a period of radical change with numerous retirements and hirings. One colleague describes Professor Crossley as "an exceptional department chair, indeed the best I have seen in my more than thirty-year career." Professor Crossley transformed the English Department into a more cohesive unit by revising the administrative structure and redefining its constitution. Another colleague describes Professor Crossley as a "rare exemplar for the campus - a chair of chairs, a citizen of citizens, and a jealous promoter and protector of a university environment within which deep and engaged learning can take place." Professor Crossley chaired, for two years in a row, national searches for the position of CLA dean and for a History Department chair. Other major service contributions include serving as: Director of the CAS Core Curriculum; Director of the Writing Proficiency Program; member of the Faculty Council; and on the executive committee of the National Association of Departments of English. Additionally, Professor Crossley contributed to the university's accreditation review and to a review of the Writing Proficiency Exam by the U.S. Office of Civil Rights. In service outside of the university, Professor Crossley played a key role in creating the Olaf Stapledon Archive at the University of Liverpool, which provides scholars with access to materials from Stapledon, a science fiction writer who has been the focus of Crossley's own scholarship.

Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching

Professor Lois Rudnick has devoted her energy to teaching at UMass Boston for more than 20 years. During that time, Professor Rudnick has designed and taught courses at every level in both the American Studies Department and the English Department. Based on student testimony, Professor Rudnick has had a profound impact on individual undergraduate and graduate level students. Her teaching excellence has been recognized by her national professional association, and is evident in her rich body of work related to her teaching in American literature and culture. In addition to directing and chairing the American Studies Department since 1983, Professor Rudnick is also widely appreciated for her contributions to mentoring many humanities faculty members through her leadership roles in the Center for the Improvement of Teaching. Professor Rudnick has impressed students and colleagues alike with her command of subject matter, her academic rigor, and her creative and effective pedagogy. Beyond the university, Professor Rudnick's passion for teaching has inspired her to chair the Committee on Secondary-University Relations for the American Studies Association for five years; to organize the American Studies Association’s annual "Focus on Teaching Day" conference; to edit the National Resource Guide to American Studies in the Secondary Schools, for which she won the Committee on American Studies Education award; and to coordinate conferences and workshops for the New England American Studies Association (NEASA). Her work in program development in the field of American Studies was honored by her selection as the recipient of the national Mary Terpie Award in 1997.

Professor Brian White has consistently received excellent teaching evaluations from students, ranging from undergraduates to advanced doctoral students. His colleagues in the Biology Department praise his multiple mentoring roles, his design and production of effective teaching materials, his assistance in providing coursework for textbooks, and his powerful integration of technology in his teaching. Professor White’s teaching methods include a variety of multimedia teaching presentations, such as open courseware, animations of sequential processes, presentations using molecular visualization software, audio podcasts of lectures, and iClickers, which is a system that allows students to answer questions in lecture via personal transmitters. Professor White has shared his expertise as a consultant with the UMass Boston Science Partnership, with several textbook projects, and with James Watson and others in the development of a documentary celebrating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA. Professor White received a CAS Outstanding Achievement Award for Teaching in 2000, and the UMass Leadership in the Assessment of Learning with Technology Award in 2005. In letters of support for Professor White, it is noted that perhaps his greatest contribution to the education of biology graduate students is through his mentoring of them in the art of teaching.

Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship

Professor Gary Siperstein has built and sustained an excellent record of scholarly achievement at UMass Boston for 32 years. Professor Siperstein founded and directs the Center for Social Development and Education. Along with Center colleagues, he has been the recipient of more than 30 research grants and contracts from external funding agencies, including the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the U.S. Department of Education, the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, and Special Olympics, Inc. As director of the Center for Social Development and Education for more than three decades, Professor Siperstein has been instrumental in fostering the careers of numerous UMass Boston faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Professor Siperstein’s scholarship has had a major and continuing impact on the fields of special education, mental retardation, and childhood disability. He has authored or co-authored two books, 56 peer-reviewed journal articles, 12 book chapters, and numerous other publications. In addition, Professor Siperstein has served as President of the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Childhood and as Research Monograph Series editor for the American Association for Mental Retardation. He has also served on state and federal committees and commissions, including the Governor's Commission on Mental Retardation and the Committee on Disability Determination for Mental Retardation of the National Academy of Science. Professor Siperstein’s scholarship, which has mainly focused on disability issues, has been widely cited by both colleagues and scholars.

Philosophy professor Robert Shope began teaching at UMass Boston in 1970. Since then, he has steadily produced influential scholarship, including two books and a large number of articles in leading journals. Professor Shope has contributed to the core areas of contemporary philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of the mind. His work is praised by a colleague as being "careful, rigorous, insightful, and original." Colleagues note that epistemologists working on the analysis of knowledge must start their work with the important lessons of Professor Shope's The Analysis of Knowing. The book examines the theory of knowledge, a central area in philosophy, and is the standard analytical review of the "Gettier problem," a problem that resulted from counterexamples offered by Edmund Gettier in the early 1960s and the range of attempts to solve it. Not only does Professor Shope’s book continue to be widely cited, its standing (and his subsequent work) is such that he is recognized as the leading expert on the Gettier problem, which can be argued as the most important problem in the literature of epistemology in the past four decades. In The Nature of Meaningfulness, Professor Shope addresses his ideas about meaning, a major topic in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of the mind. Professor Shope has sustained a record of publication in first-rate refereed philosophy journals with highly selective editorial policies, such as the Journal of Philosophy. Professor Shope has continued his scholarly productivity, with an essay of his being published in an upcoming issue of Synthese and another book in progress on causal powers and representing.