Students
Honor Smith Faculty, Staff at Rally Day
Smith students
honored two faculty members and two staff members with awards
of appreciation during the annual Rally Day convocation on
Wednesday, February 22, in Sage Hall.
Given annually by students to honor faculty members’
dedication to excellent teaching, the Faculty Teaching Award
was established 22 years ago as a way for students to thank
educators for their support, encouragement and inspiration.
The Student Government Association solicits nominations and
selects the winners.
“Our professors
guide us through difficult decisions, challenge us to think
in unexpected patterns, and make us read and write until we
sweat blood,” said Kathleen Gabel ’06, chair of
the selection committee, who announced the winners. “And
we love them for it.” The winners of the 2006 award,
Gabel said, “have distinguished themselves as being
exceptionally dedicated to the education of the whole student
and whom embody the spirit of Smith College.”
David Newbury, the Gwendolen Carter Professor
of African Studies, history department, received the Faculty
Teaching Award for tenured faculty.
Newbury’s
research focuses on three major projects dealing with the
historical dynamics of Central and East Africa. He teaches
courses pertaining to the history, environment, famine, and
missions and missionaries in Africa, and on women in African
history. His books include African Historiographies: What
History for Which Africa?, and Kings and Clans: A
Social History of the Lake Kivu Rift Valley.
“In and
outside of class, students always seem to know who he is and
have a great deal of respect and admiration for him,”
said Gabel. According to one of his students, she said, “he
is just an all-around phenomenal person, and the best professor
I’ve ever been fortunate enough to have been instructed
by.”
Robert
Hosmer, senior lecturer in English language and literature,
received the Faculty Teaching Award for non-tenured faculty.
Hosmer teaches
fiction, poetry and masterpieces of Western literature while
specializing in the work of 20th-century women writers, including
Virginia Woolf, Penelope Fitzgerald and Muriel Spark. He is
the author of the forthcoming Shall We Say I Had Fun with
My Imagination: Essays in Honor of Muriel Spark.
“His promise
to students is that his class will never be a waste of time,”
said Gabel. “According to students, it never is.”
The Gavel Award is given annually by students to Smith staff
members “who have given extraordinarily of themselves
to the Smith College community as a whole.” Established
in 1984, the Gavel Award is administered by the Student Government
Association.
The 2006 Gavel
Award winners are:
Janine
Nye, a housekeeper in Parsons House. “We are
a community, a family,” said Nye of her, her cohorts
and the students in Parsons in accepting the award. “We
work as a team and that’s what Smith encourages us to
do.”
Matthew
Gawron, assistant director of the Campus Center.
More than anyone else on campus, Gawron, said the student
presenters, “knows the ins and outs of the Campus Center.
He’s our Campus Center role model.”
In addition, the
Rally Day convocation awarded prizes to winners of the annual
Banner Award contest, which rallies students to paint banners
in the Rally Day theme, which this year was “Thinking
Caps and Party Hats.” The winner for Best Use of Theme
was Park House. The winner for the Most Creative
banner was the Ada Comstock Scholars Program.
The banners are displayed in the Campus Center.
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