Nine University of Notre Dame educators were honored with awards at the University’s annual President’s Dinner held May 17.
Patrick E. Murphy, Professor of Marketing
2016 Faculty Award
The Faculty Award singles out a faculty member who, in the opinion of his or her colleagues, has contributed outstanding service to Notre Dame, such as through leadership activities, faculty mentoring, or exemplary dedication to students. A 1970 Notre Dame alum, this year’s recipient chaired the Department of Marketing for 10 years, during which time he initiated the College of Business Career Fair and coordinated it until it grew to become a University-wide event, open to all majors. Also while he was chair, and well before the University adopted its current Commencement weekend format, he created a recognition ceremony specifically for his department’s graduating seniors, with the rest of the departments in Business soon following suit. His tenure as co-director of the Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide helped advance the Mendoza College of Business’ well-known specialties in business ethics and corporate responsibility. He is the winner of three Notre Dame teaching awards, the University’s Reinhold Niebuhr and Presidential Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marketing and Society Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association. For the past six years, he has served as the University Faculty Honor Code Officer; for the past 32, he has served on his department’s CAP.
Nicole S. Garnett, John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law
2016 Reinhold Niebuhr Award
With the Reinhold Niebuhr Award, the University honors a faculty member or administrator whose body of academic work and life promote or exemplify social justice. The 2016 winner is a leading authority on urban policy and education reform who is a veteran advocate for measures that increase access to high-performing schools and other opportunities for low-income students. A fellow of the University’s Institute for Educational Initiatives and the coordinator of policy for the institute’s Alliance for Catholic Education, she has consulted regularly with Church and community leaders as well as public officials across the country on how best to strengthen and preserve America’s Catholic schools. Her numerous scholarly works include the 2009 book, “Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing, and the Restoration of Urban America,” and in 2014, “Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools’ Importance in Urban America.” Co-authored with one of her colleagues in the Notre Dame Law School, the latter book is a major research project that examines closely the effects of Catholic school closures on urban neighborhoods and documents the crucial contributions these institutions make to social capital and community well-being.
Carl B. Ackermann, Nolan Professor of Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction Professional Specialist, Finance
2016 Grenville Clark Award
The Grenville Clark Award is given to a faculty member or administrator whose voluntary activities serve to advance the cause of peace and human rights. Specializing in financial management and personal finance, this year’s winner has been a respectful yet outspoken critic of excessive fees in the investment industry, challenging its leaders to reduce these charges and redirect a portion of their resources toward humanitarian causes. He has been a faculty fellow of the Center for Social Concerns — where, among other initiatives, he helped facilitate undergraduate participation in micro-lending programs — and he plays an instrumental role in the annual Lenten food drive conducted by the Mendoza College of Business. His service in the community also includes sitting on the investment committee for the Center for Hospice Care and providing free, comprehensive financial planning for employees of local nonprofits. A heavily decorated teacher who has been recognized by Bloomberg Businessweek as one of 10 favorite undergraduate business professors nationwide, he can regularly be seen throughout the community working to enhance financial literacy as a means for fighting poverty. Those who know him say the only thing bigger than his smile is his heart.
Stuart Greene, Associate Professor of English
2016 Presidential Award
The Presidential Award recognizes distinguished service to the University over an extended period of time. Foremost among the many contributions this year’s winner makes to the Notre Dame community is his dedicated action toward enhancing educational outcomes for his students and others. Co-editor of the award-winning volume “Making Race Visible: Literacy Research for Cultural Understanding,” he co-founded and then spent 10 years directing the interdisciplinary minor in Education, Schooling, and Society, or ESS. His idea was to give undergraduates the opportunity to study education through the lens of the social, historical, psychological, cultural and economic influences that impact children and communities. Colleagues, students and alumni alike say he is the embodiment of kindness and the holistic, human approach to mentorship and learning that characterizes ESS. Whether helping first-generation students navigate the university landscape, traveling with students over break to explore difficult course material in real life, or hosting dinner for students who cannot go home for Thanksgiving, he is a tireless advocate for social justice who creates spaces where those who might otherwise feel at the margins are known and valued for precisely who they are.
Marsha Stevenson, Visual Arts Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries
2016 Rev. Paul J. Foik, C.S.C., Award
This year’s winner of the Rev. Paul J. Foik, C.S.C., Award for library faculty has made many significant contributions to the Notre Dame community over the past 26 years. During that time, she has headed two Hesburgh Library departments, Reference and Arts, Architecture, and Media. Faculty laud her as a dedicated collaborator and effective advocate when it comes to their scholarship as well as a generous and patient educator who offers course-related instructional sessions on using library resources and tools for research. One of the library’s liaisons to the residence halls, she has conducted numerous workshops on topics such as image use and copyright for students and colleagues. In her current roles as the subject specialist in art, art history, and design and the visual arts librarian, she is engaged in research on the history of the Congregation of Holy Cross at the church of Santa Brigida in Rome. She also continues to build a unique collection of printed materials chronicling the stories of hundreds of Roman churches, with her careful work on the ground in Rome leading to the acquisition of thousands of parish histories, pamphlets, and infrequently held books.
Michael Detlefsen, McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy
2016 Research Achievement Award
Recognized for his contributions to research in the philosophy of mathematics, the winner of the 2016 Research Achievement Award has established himself as the leading English-language commentator on famed mathematician David Hilbert’s work in logic and the foundations of mathematics. Our recipient’s international standing is evidenced by the “Chaire d’excellence” he was awarded by the French government — an honor that carried with it a $1.1 million research grant — and his subsequent appointment as Distinguished Guest Professor at the University of Paris Diderot. In addition to Notre Dame, several French institutes and universities are supporting his research project “Ideals of Proof” while his annual PhilMath Intersem research seminar continues to attract the most important scholars in the philosophy of mathematics from around the globe. The founder of Notre Dame’s unique joint Ph.D. program in Logic and Foundations of Mathematics, he is well-known as a mentor to graduate students in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, with roughly half of those enrolled at North American institutions actively exchanging ideas with him during their graduate studies. Students with whom he has worked have been hired into nearly all of the jobs in the philosophy of mathematics advertised in the last decade.
Victoria E. Goodrich, Associate Professor of the Practice, College of Engineering Director, First-Year Engineering Program
2016 Thomas P. Madden Award
The Thomas P. Madden Award honors exceptional teaching of first-year undergraduates, and it has taken the 2016 winner little time to distinguish herself in this respect. Since joining the Notre Dame faculty several years ago, she has been involved in all aspects of developing first-year students inside and outside of the classroom. Whether using cutting-edge technologies and techniques to make the learning experience more exciting, vibrant, and dynamic or serving as a role model and mentor to those in first-year engineering courses, she is someone whose teaching, advice, and counsel have already proven indispensable to the success of a multitude of students. She also serves as advisor to Notre Dame’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, the most active student club within the College of Engineering. Her passion for working with students is self-evident, and her boundless energy and enthusiasm as a professor, scholar and mentor are an inspiration to all who are privileged to call her a colleague.
Rev. Patrick E. Reidy, C.S.C., Rector of Keough Hall
2016 Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C., Award for Preaching
Since entering formation with the Congregation of Holy Cross, this year’s recipient of the Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C., Award for Preaching has served in retreat ministry, the RCIA program, hospital chaplaincy, student leadership development, marriage preparation, and as a mentor to underprivileged youth. The rector of Keough Hall and chaplain for the Notre Dame Vision program, he is known campus-wide for lively and thoughtful homilies, his well-articulated insights into the Scriptures allowing the word of God to come alive in the hearts of those who hear him preach. His blending of current events and personal anecdotes has connected with students in such a powerful way that he has been invited by the junior class to preach at Junior Parents Weekend the past two years. So beloved is he as a priest and pastoral leader that it would be easy to forget he is less than a decade removed from being a Notre Dame undergraduate himself.
Susan Sharpe, Faculty Advisor for Restorative Justice, Center for Social Concerns
2016 Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C., Award for Social Justice
It is fitting that we recognize the winner of the 2016 Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C., Award for Social Justice during this “Year of Mercy” declared by Pope Francis, for she is the embodiment of that ideal. In her position at the Center for Social Concerns, she oversees all of the restorative justice efforts and programming for both undergraduate and graduate students. She has, for instance, set up talking circles in the local community for at-risk youth to work through conflicts and then used these opportunities to train Notre Dame students in the practice of restorative justice. She also brought the “Inside-Out” course to the University, allowing students to take a class with incarcerated individuals in Westville Correctional Facility and symbolically break down the walls of learning. Following the annual “Show Some Skin” event, which gives voice to unspoken stories about identity and difference on the Notre Dame campus, she organized sharing circles for students and staff to continue the discussion and provide healing — her work here rooted, as it always is, in the values of inclusion, dignity and accountability.