Professors Bruce Dickson, John Lachin and Honey Nashman are the winners of the 2010 Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Teaching, Scholarship and Service Prizes respectively.
“GW has a strong and dedicated faculty,” says Donald R. Lehman, Ph.D. ’70, executive vice president for academic affairs. “The Trachtenberg prizes are one way that the university recognizes outstanding faculty performance.”
Former GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg created the prizes in the early 1990s in memory of his parents. Each of the awards comes with a $1,000 prize. The recipients are honored at GW’s university-wide Commencement ceremony, to be held this year on May 16.
Honey W. Nashman, associate professor and director of human services, says she was surprised, shocked and humbled to learn she was being awarded the Oscar and Shoshana
Trachtenberg Prize for University Service.
“I am proud to be a faculty member of a higher education institution that highly values and enthusiastically supports civic engagement and public service,” she says. “This commitment to service is in accord with GW’s mission to dedicate itself to furthering human well-being. Our university has this proud culture of service, which I personally prefer to refer to as an ‘ecology of service,’ which extends regionally, nationally and globally.”
The service award, which is decided by a faculty committee, recognizes a tenured professor’s “exceptional service” to GW, particularly in the areas of active membership in the Faculty Senate and committees, and “other activities that directly involve institutional governance or the conduct of the university’s corporate affairs.”
According to Donna Scarboro, associate vice president for international programs and the selection committee chair for the service prize, Ms. Nashman exemplifies a “spirit of generosity and responsibility” at GW.
“As GW gives increased attention to service in its many forms, the Trachtenberg Prize for University Service reminds us that our immediate GW community benefits from the significant contributions of faculty members who go beyond their explicit roles to carry out important work for the benefit of all,” says Dr. Scarboro.
Bruce Dickson, professor of political science and international affairs, who won the Trachtenberg Prize for Teaching, says he is struck by the uniqueness of the recognition.
“It might seem like a no-brainer to give teaching awards to our faculty, but it is too rarely done,” says Dr. Dickson. “Most of the attention is rightly given to our research, whether in landing new grants or getting books and articles published. Teaching is too often taken for granted, even though it is integral to what happens within GW and other universities. So it is very flattering to be recognized for contributions in teaching.”
The teaching prize, established in 1990, recognizes a professor for “accurate and effective communication to undergraduates of important cultural, historical and/or scientific subject matter as well as current scholarship and scholarly debate in the fields involved.” Undergraduate students nominate professors in the fall semester, and departments compile the nominations and submit them to the selection committee.
John Lachin, professor of biostatistics, epidemiology and statistics and co-director of the Biostatistics Center, says he was surprised to win the research and scholarship award that is so “highly coveted and vigorously competed by the faculty.”
Dr. Lachin is a specialist in statistical and research methodology who has authored or contributed to nearly 150 peer-reviewed publications. He has an h-index of 42, which means that 42 of his papers have been cited at least 42 times in other scholarly articles. Some of his recent research has focused on the “intent-to-treat principle” in clinical trials, treatment of type 1 diabetes and the ways weight loss affects the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
“I am humbled to have been selected,” he said of the award.
On April 23, Dr. Lehman and GW President Steven Knapp will attend an event celebrating Dr. Dickson’s award. The event, which will begin at 4 p.m. and is open to the GW community, will be held at 1957 E Street, room 214.