Scholars Honored at Reception
09/15/2023
Scholars from across Saint Louis University gathered in the Sinquefield Stateroom in DuBourg Hall on Thursday afternoon to salute and honor excellence in research and scholarship.
The 2023 Scholarly Works reception celebrated success in publications and exhibitions from the previous year.
Provost Mike Lewis, Ph.D., addressed the crowd at the 2023 Scholarly Works reception
on Thursday, Sept. 14. Photo by Joe Barker.
Ken Olliff, vice president for research and partnerships, said the awards are designed to “recognize truly exceptional scholarly accomplishments.” He noted that all the recipients were nominated by their peers.
“I think it’s really important for the entire SLU community to take this time and recognize excellence,” he said. “You all work so hard. The commitment of our faculty, students and research staff — you all do amazing work, and it’s an absolute pleasure to recognize a few of you.”
Provost Mike Lewis, Ph.D., said he was blown away by the breadth and quality of the work being done at the University.
“What a great privilege it is to get to work and be part of such a great community of incredible researchers and incredible scholars and teachers,” Lewis said. “It’s really wonderful.”
Lewis said he is often included in emails from the Office of the Vice President for Research touting the success and accomplishments of SLU researchers. The messages sometimes take his whole inbox, but he said he doesn’t mind.
“To read about the incredible things that are happening, there’s a great privilege in that,” he said. “It’s a lot of great things, and you end up being humbled by it, and that’s how I feel reading all these emails. I’ve read about our faculty doing research to advance marginalized communities,artists celebrating marginalized communities, researchers investigating new resources for mental health for our youth, our faculty doing work on the ethics of drones — it’s really mission-centered work.”
President Fred P. Pestello, Ph.D., shared a story of how visitors to his SLU office are often amazed by his wall of books. He said the books, mostly written by academics, represent the culmination of work and are symbols of the author’s mastery of their disciplines.
The works being recognized at the ceremony, he said, represent the authors' expertise, which helps advance education.
“Think about what you do,” he said. “You add new knowledge to the accumulated knowledge of humankind all the way up to this point in history. From there, others will take what you’ve done and build on it from there. What you do is noble and not without sacrifice.”
2023 Scholarly Works Awards
Public Works
- Junior Faculty Winner: Whitney Linsenmeyer, Ph.D., assistant professor, Nutrition and Dietetics: Advancing Inclusion of Transgender and Gender Diverse Identities in Clinical Education: A Toolkit for Clinical Educators.
- Senior Faculty Winner: Pauline Lee, Ph.D., associate professor, Theological Studies, and Helen de Cruz, Ph.D., professor, Philosophy: “How to be useless,” Psyche Magazine, 2022.
Creative Works
- Senior Faculty Winner: Amber Johnson, Ph.D., professor, Communication: Transfuturism (art exhibit)
Non-Books (Articles)
- Senior Faculty Winner: Dana Baum, Ph.D., associate professor, Chemistry: “An RNA aptamer that shifts the reduction potential of metabolic cofactors.” Nature Chemical Biology.
- Honorable Mention: Annie Garner, Ph.D., associate professor, Psychology: “Trial of training to reduce driver inattention in teens with ADHD”. New England Journal of Medicine.
- Junior Faculty Winner: Jamie Neely, Ph.D., assistant professor, Chemistry: Carbene-Like Reactivity in an Iron Azametallacyclobutene Complex: Insights from Electronic Structure”. Inorganic Chemistry.
- Honorable Mention: Sean Massa, M.D., assistant professor, Otolaryngology: “Quantifying Total and Out-of-Pocket Costs Associated With Head and Neck Cancer Survivorship”. JAMA Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery.
Book in a language other than English
- Winner: Angeles Encinar, Ph.D., professor, Spanish, SLU Madrid: Las cuatro esquinas. (Ediciones Cátedra).
Books
- Junior Faculty Winner: Emily Dumler-Winckler, Ph.D., assistant professor, Theological Studies: Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent. Oxford University Press 2022.
- Honorable Mention: Afonso Seixas-Nunes, S.J., assistant professor, School of Law: The Legality and Accountability of Autonomous Weapon Systems: A Humanitarian Law Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
- Senior Faculty Winner: Amanda Izzo, Ph.D., associate professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Benjamin Looker, Ph.D., associate professor, American Studies: Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s. University of Missouri Press, 2022.