Faculty Honors

TYLER PRIZE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT

The 2018 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement—often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for the Environment”—has been awarded to Rutgers University–New Brunswick biological oceanographer Paul Falkowski. The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences distinguished professor shares the prize with Harvard biological oceanographer James J. McCarthy. The two Tyler Prize laureates were recognized for “their enormous contributions to fighting climate change through increasing our scientific understanding of how Earth’s climate works, as well as bringing together that knowledge for the purpose of policy change."

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS

Jayne Anne Phillips, author, professor, and founding director of the M.F.A. in creative writing program at Rutgers University–Newark, was elected in 2018 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The academy’s  membership of 250 is divided into departments of art, literature, and music, and only academicians may nominate and elect new members.

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

Patrick Rosal, an associate professor of English at Rutgers University–Camden, has been named a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Creative Writing (Prose) Fellow. In 2017, Rosal was named a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, and his poetry collection, Brooklyn Antediluvian, won the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

JOHN SIMON GUGGENHEIM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

Nicolás Pereda, director of the Rutgers Filmmaking Center at Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, has been awarded a 2018 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Guggenheim fellowships enable recipients to “engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts.” He was cited for his work that "explores the everyday through fractured and elliptical narratives using fiction and documentary tools."

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANCER RESEARCH

The American Association for Cancer Research has recognized medical oncologist Joseph R. Bertino with its 2018 Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research. Bertino, a senior adviser to the director of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and university professor of medicine and pharmacology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, was honored for “basic science discoveries in the fields of drug action and tumor cell resistance.”

American Marketing Association

Jerome Williams—Rutgers University­–Newark executive vice chancellor, provost, distinguished professor, and Prudential Chair at Rutgers Business School—is the recipient of the American Marketing Association’s Marketing and Society Special Interest Group (MASSIG) 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award. In honoring Williams, MASSIG noted “his scholarship on critically important issues such as marketplace inclusion, social justice, and public policy” and his many publications on “topics related to promoting diversity, reducing childhood obesity, reducing marketplace discrimination, promoting multicultural marketing and advertising, and understanding ethics and social justice issues in marketing.”

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Helen M. Berman, Board of Governors distinguished professor emerita of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berman is among 213 people elected to the academy in 2018, including author Ta-Nehisi Coates, actor Tom Hanks, President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, gene-editing developer Feng Zhang, and pediatric neurologist Huda Zoghbi. Berman cofounded the Protein Data Bank (PDB)—a free, online library of the structures of biological macromolecules that scientists around the globe use to study, store, and share molecular information.

AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES

Kate Epstein, associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Camden and expert in controversial American state secrets, is the recipient of a 2018 American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars. The fellowship, which carries a $95,000 stipend and a $7,500 research budget, supports recently tenured faculty at pivotal points in their careers.

BALDRIGE FOUNDATION

Brent Ruben, distinguished professor in Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s School of Communication and Information and executive director of the Center for Organizational Leadership at Rutgers, is an inaugural winner of a Baldrige Foundation Leadership Excellence Award, given in 2018. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program was established by the U.S. Congress in 1987 to promote U.S. corporate effectiveness. When the Baldrige Foundation extended its model to the health care and education sectors in the 1990s, Ruben led the effort to adapt the model for universities and colleges.

CHICKEN & EGG PICTURES

Kimi Takesue, associate professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University–Newark, won a $50,000 2018 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award for her film 95 and 6 to Go, a documentary, filmed over a six-year period, about her grandfather. Through the award, which also includes a yearlong mentorship program, Chicken & Egg Pictures supports rising female documentarians.

PEABODY AWARDS

Chenjerai Kumanyika, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s School of Communication and Information, has won a 2017 Peabody Award for “The Raid,”  an episode of “Uncivil,” a podcast that tells overlooked stories of the American Civil War. Kumanyika and journalist Jack Hitt, won the Peabody in the radio/podcast category.

AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE SOCIETY AND OCTAVIA E. BUTLER LITERARY SOCIETY

Cheryl A. Wall, Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston professor of English, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, is the inaugural recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Award for outstanding contributions to scholarship on black women writers. The award, presented in 2017, cited Wall’s work as an “institution-builder and her mentorship of women of color scholars, marked most prominently by her role in creating the African American and Africa Diaspora postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers.”

National Academy of Engineering

Martin L. Yarmush, Paul and Mary Monroe chair and distinguished professor, biomedical engineering, School of Engineering, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, was elected in 2017 to the National Academy of Engineering, among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Yarmush was recognized for his “pioneering advances in cellular, tissue, and organ engineering and for leadership in applying metabolic engineering to human health.”

Geological Society of America

Alexander Gates, Distinguished Service Professor in Rutgers University–Newark’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has received the 2017 Geological Society of America’s Public Service Award, which honors contributions that enhance the public's understanding of the earth sciences and serve decision-makers in the application of scientific and technical information.

U.s. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs: Fulbright

Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of public policy and administration, director of the Community Leadership Center, and board chair of the LEAP Academy University Charter School at Rutgers University–Camden, has been named a Fulbright Specialist for 2017–2018; she will lead a professional development institute on leadership, resource development, and community engagement at Universidad Nacional de Asunción in San Lorenzo, Paraguay.

Association of American Law Schools

Frank Askin, Rutgers Law School professor emeritus, has won the national Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Clinical Section’s 2017 William Pincus Award for outstanding service and commitment to clinical education. It is the highest honor that the AALS Clinical Section can bestow on a clinical educator. He founded the law school's Constitutional Rights Clinic and was the longest-serving general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

American Academy of Nursing

Elizabeth Scannell-Desch, professor and associate dean of baccalaureate programs, School of Nursing–Camden, Rutgers University–Camden, was one of 173 nurse leaders inducted as 2017 fellows of the American Academy of Nursing, one of the highest honors in the nursing profession. Scannell-Desch is a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps and a noted scholar on such diverse issues as nurses in the military, the impact of mid-life widowhood, and oncology.