Five members of the Hamilton faculty were recognized for their research and creative successes through a new series of awards presented at the 2008 Class & Charter Day on May 9. The Dean’s Scholarly Achievement Awards were instituted in three categories this year by Dean of Faculty Joe Urgo. The Career Achievement Award marks significant achievement over the course of a career; Early Career Achievement marks significant achievement at the advanced assistant or associate level; and Notable Year Achievement recognizes up to three faculty members for particular achievement in the past year.
Derek Jones, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, received the Career Achievement Award; Associate Professor of Mathematics Debra Boutin was awarded Early Career Achievement; and Assistant Professor of Sociology Stephen Ellingson, Associate Professor of English Naomi Guttman and Associate Professor of History Lisa Trivedi all received the Notable Year Achievement awards.
“In reviewing the professional accomplishments of the faculty over the last year, the amount and quality of faculty scholarship and creative activity is both impressive and humbling,” Urgo noted. “We wanted to recognize the important role that research plays in the teaching our faculty does.” He said that department chairs were asked to submit nominations which were then discussed with the Academic Council.
Derek Jones has been a member of the faculty for more than 30 years. During this period he has served as departmental chair and as director of the Hamilton in New York City program. He has published three books and more than 100 articles (including several with students) and has also edited eight books. Jones undertook some of the first empirical analysis of long established worker cooperatives, employee ownership and participation, is a past president of the international association, Economics of Participation, and co-edits the research series Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor Managed Firms.
Debra Boutin came to Hamilton in 1999. She earned her undergraduate degree from Smith College in 1991 and her Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in 1998. Boutin has 15 papers in print, 12 submitted for publication while on the Hamilton faculty. In the last year she has published papers in three professional journals – Journal of Graph Theory, Electronic Journal of Combinatronics and Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing. She also presented work at four professional conferences.
Stephen Ellingson joined the Hamilton faculty in 2004. In the past year he authored The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-First Century (University of Chicago Press). It was awarded the 2007 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the preeminent social science association in religious studies, at the organization’s annual meeting in November. Ellingson was approved for tenure by Hamilton's Board of Trustees in March and will receive the title of associate professor on July 1.
Naomi Guttman joined the Hamilton faculty in 1996. During the past year she published her second book of poetry, Wet Apples, White Blood (McGill-Queen’s University Press). In April she received a $20,000 grant for Mid-Career Professional Writers from the Canada Council to work on a third book of poems. Guttman participated in Blue Metropolis, an international literary festival in Montreal, and her essay “Sustainable is Beautiful: Pastured Egg Farming in Central New York” appeared in Eggs in Cookery.
Lisa Trivedi joined the faculty in 2000. In 2007 she published a book, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India (Indiana University Press). Also in 2007 Trivedi was named to the board of directors of ASIANetwork, an organization of 170 liberal arts colleges with Asian Studies Programs. She has just begun a term as the chair of the Membership Committee which is responsible both for retaining members and identifying new members. This summer Trivedi will also contribute to the organization as a writer of grants, including one ASIANetwork plans to make to the Mellon Foundation.
