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Smith Students Honor Two Faculty Members for Excellence in Teaching
Editor's note: High-res digital images of the award winners are available.
NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—Smith College students recently honored two faculty members for excellence in teaching. Dominique Thiébaut, associate professor of computer science, and Ginetta Candelario, assistant professor of sociology and Latin American and Latina/o studies, accepted the awards during the College’s Rally Day celebration, Feb. 23.
Given annually to one senior and one junior faculty member, the Faculty Teaching Award was established 21 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.
“This award is distinctive in that students alone are given the opportunity to nominate professors they deem outstanding educators—those who establish unique rapport with students and who embody the spirit of Smith College,” said Katie Drennan, a member of the selection committee and the Class of 2005.
Dominique Thiébaut, computer science
Thiébaut currently teaches the computer science department’s introductory course and an engineering course about designing intelligent robots. He also maintains a Web site with solutions to 99 “simple” computer problems and edits the newsletter for the computer science department. Computer architecture is Thiébaut’s research interest. In one of his courses, he teaches students to write programs that directly control the different hardware components inside the computer. He is currently designing a novel Processing-In-Memory (PIM) system and investigating its application to digital image processing.
Thiébaut “can arouse the interest and excitement of students over the most difficult and trying tasks,” said Drennan.
Ginetta Candelario, sociology, Latin American and Latina/o Studies
Candelario teaches about race and ethnicity in the Americas, Latina/o communities and Latina feminism. Her forthcoming book, tentatively titled “Black Behind the Ears: Ambiguity and Blackness in Displays of Dominican Identity,” will be published this year by Duke University Press. She is a member of the Women’s Studies Program Committee at Smith and serves on the editorial board of the academic journal Meridians. She researches issues of Dominican identity and the history of Dominican feminist activism and did research in that area as a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic in 2003.
“In her persona as a woman and as a professor, she teaches and is the embodiment of what Smith stands for: hard work, intelligence, confidence, community and success,” said Drennan.
Smith College is consistently ranked among the nation’s foremost liberal arts colleges. Enrolling 2,800 students from every state and 60 other countries, Smith is the largest undergraduate women’s college in the country.
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