2025 Academic Awards

Senior associate provost Cathy Dollard noted: Today we recognize a colleague whose teaching – in every class session – integrates the development of applied skills and the advancement of cultural understanding. Her pedagogy reflects a student-centered approach within a framework that allows for the measurement of student growth, ensuring that her students become “both linguistically and culturally competent.” This happens in a scaffolded curriculum designed by our colleague. In introductory courses, students are immersed in basic language skills such as learning a new alphabet and beginning to explore the right-to-left reading structure. As students advance through the program, cultural competency is increasingly woven through the program. 

At the intermediate level, our colleague embraces technology, utilizing generative AI to enhance course activities and developing an Oral History Digital Archive created by her students. Throughout her courses, students are introduced to the “rich tapestry of Arab culture, encompassing its values, beliefs, and traditions both inside and outside the classroom.” Middle Eastern cuisine and music, as well as field trips to meet Arab and Muslim communities in Columbus and Dearborn, Michigan, also infuse the richness of her courses. For her inventive integration of leading-edge technology into her instruction, her creative infusion of cultural studies into linguistic skill development, and her leadership in establishing Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at Denison and on behalf of her colleagues who have selected her for this award, I am honored to present the Charles A. Brickman Teaching Excellence Award to Hanada al-Masri, associate professor of modern languages.

Senior associate provost Cathy Dollard noted: The colleague we recognize today sees making connections as the principal goal of his teaching. As an advisor, he asks his first-year advisees to read William Cronon’s Only Connect as they discuss the nature of the liberal arts. He views connectedness as especially essential to students in his field, who sometimes veer toward focusing narrowly on skills development. In introductory courses, while teaching students problem-solving skills, he helps them see ties to topics in the sciences, such as disease modeling, or in the social sciences, such as Congressional polarization. He integrates writing skills throughout all levels of his teaching and, at the same time, ensures that students “really know the math” before they develop advanced coding skills in the upper levels of his field. His course on game design requires students to produce games targeted to the campus community and holds showcases twice a semester to demonstrate those games. Computer science students learn advanced coding while they work on an interdisciplinary team with creative writing and music composition students, further building connections. 

For his commitment to the liberal arts, his dedication to the field of computer science, and his innovative pedagogy at all levels of the curriculum, and on behalf of his colleagues who have selected him for this award, I am honored to present the Bonar Family Mentorship and Teaching Award to Ashwin Lall, professor of computer science.

Senior associate provost Cathy Dollard noted: Today, we recognize a colleague who has an extraordinary record of scholarly production: one book, 34 peer-reviewed articles, 19 book reviews, and 54 conference presentations. The Baker Award, however, is not bestowed based on prolificacy, and our colleague’s contributions extend well beyond numbers. Recognized as the leading scholar of a consequential 20th-century author, our colleague has advanced our understanding of Cold War literature. His academic interests are not limited to one era, having written on topics ranging from 19th-century Dutch anti-colonialist and literary activism to German cinema in the Nazi era, to the analysis of precarity in the contemporary literature of Jenny Erpenbeck. It is perhaps not surprising that he has written about topics including the literary “Appeal of Routine” and the “Durability of Everyday Life,” because he has been a most dependable, consistent, unassuming, and wise colleague throughout his 36 years of service at Denison. An international scholar, he has published in all of the most important venues in German Studies and is renowned for his pathbreaking scholarship on the writing of German author Uwe Johnson, among many others. 

For his insightful and significant exploration of central European literature and for standing as a model of the consummate scholar-teacher, and on behalf of his colleagues who have selected him for this award, I am honored to present the David Baker Research and Scholarship Excellence Award to Gary Baker, professor of modern languages.