Kudos is an occasional column that recognizes Dartmouth faculty, students, and staff who have received awards or other honors. Did you or a colleague recently receive an award or honor? Please tell us about it: dartmouth.news@dartmouth.edu.
Dartmouth’s 2022 Fed Challenge team, sponsored by the Department of Economics, finished first in the Boston District competition and finished third nationally out of 84 schools, falling to first place-winner Princeton and second-place finisher University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the virtual competition hosted by the Federal Reserve in Washington this month.
This year’s team includes Kevin Cao ’25, Brandon Chen ’23, Kira Hobson ’23, Joanne Liu ’23, Lewis MacMillan ’23, Ian McGrory ’22, Lake McGreevy ’23, John Petrich ’22, Nicholas Taborsky ’23, Emily Wang ’22, and faculty adviser Elisabeth Curtis, senior lecturer in economics.
“We want to encourage people who want to make a difference, at every stage of their careers, to consider public service,” Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said in a news release. “These students view the issues we face as a country from their own perspectives, and those fresh views and understanding are valuable.”
Teams were evaluated on economic analysis, responses to judges’ questions, teamwork, and presentation. The Dartmouth Fed Challenge team finished first in the 2020 national Fed Challenge and third last year.
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Yana Stainova, assistant professor of anthropology at McMaster University and a fellow with the Dartmouth Society of Fellows from 2016 to 2019, has recently received two major awards for her 2021 book, Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela.
Sonorous Worlds received the 2022 Edie Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing given by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology each year for first books by junior scholars that exhibit “graceful, accessible ethnographic writing which deeply explores its subject and contributes in innovative and engaging ways.”
The book also received the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology Book Prize given by the American Anthropological Association. The SLACA Book Prize aims to “recognize distinguished anthropological work that advances the understanding of the Americas in innovative and potentially transformative ways.”
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Dartmouth has been recognized with three Best of CASE District I awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education for 2022.
In the category of Videos: News and Research, the Best of CASE Award went to “Short Talks on Big Ideas: Slavery’s Afterlife.” The “Short Talks” video series was developed by Dartmouth Alumni’s Lifelong Learning team, “Inviting alumni to ‘go back to class.”
The award-winning video, “Slavery’s Afterlife,” features Associate Professor Kimberly Juanita Brown as she examines our culture’s perception of Black bodies, imminent death, and the ways these images cause collective suffering, and was produced by Signe Taylor of the Office of Communications.
“Fascinating research in its own right, the topic of racial justice is also timely and a priority for Dartmouth College, so featuring this video was a way of further educating our alumni base about anti-racism,” the award citation noted.
As previously announced, the Advancement Division won Best of CASE for the Moosilauke Forum Alumni Research Panel initiative, which developed a new alumni survey tool that, “revolutionized its approach to surveys, turning to the Forum to inform immediate decisions related to alumni engagement and other critical issues that ultimately drove strategy and elevated the use of data in the division.”
And Conferences and Events took Best in CASE for the special in-person event, Hard Hat Weekend: Campaign Leadership Preview, which was part of the Call to Lead campaign. Hard Hat Weekend invited leadership donors and campaign volunteers to campus for tours of the seven new or renovated buildings they helped fund to show them “their collective, enduring impact, and to express our gratitude.”
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Aaní Perkins ’23, a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and co-president of Native Americans at Dartmouth, is the winner of the 2022 Ranny B. Cardozo Jr. 1978 Award, given to “the outstanding member of the junior class who most exemplifies Ranny B. Cardozo’s academic enthusiasm, genuine concern for fellow classmates, and dynamic participation in campus and community activities.”
Perkins, who is also a student instructor with the Sitka Native Education Program with her Sitka Tribe of Alaska teaching the Lingít language, was selected for the Office of Student Life junior prize by a committee of students in the senior class, chaired by last year’s Cardozo Prize winner, Mariana Peñaloza Morales ’22.
The award was presented on Nov. 9 at an event hosted by Dean of the College Scott C. Brown.
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University of Southern California President Carol Folt, a former professor of biological sciences who served as interim president at Dartmouth a decade ago, has been named chair of the Association of American Universities.
Folt was named interim president of Dartmouth in 2012 following the departure of President Jim Yong Kim, and went on to become the first female chancellor of the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill in 2013. Folt was named president of the University of Southern California in 2019, the first woman to serve in that post in the university’s 142-year history.
“AAU plays a central role in educating policy makers about the unique role that research universities play in our nation’s well-being and economic health, and I’m delighted in helping to lead such a wonderful organization,” Folt said in an AAU press release.
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To celebrate National Philanthropy Day earlier this month, the students in Professor Ron Shaiko’s “Introduction to Public Policy Research” class selected two Upper Valley nonprofits, from among the nine organizations working with the class to write grant proposals, to receive $5,000 each.
The students selected the Fairlee (Vt.) Public Library and the Claremont (N.H.) Learning Partnership to receive the grants, which were funded through the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation. After student groups made presentations on behalf of Upper Valley nonprofits seeking funding, the students deliberated and selected the two winners.
“The principal purpose of the award was to teach the next generation about the responsibilities attendant to philanthropic giving. So, having the students assess nonprofits and award grants gets them further engaged in philanthropy,” says Shaiko, associate director of curricular and research programs at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. The class also worked with the Center for Social Impact in selecting the organizations to work with, earning the course designation as a “Social Impact Practicum.”
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Mark Williams, associate professor of Film and Media Studies and director of the Media Ecology Project, delivered the inaugural Roger Ebert Lecture at the University of Illinois on Oct 28, as part of the official launch of the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies.
Williams, who received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois in 1978, spoke on “Re-Enchanting Our Relationship to Film and Media History: A Brief Survey of the Media Ecology Project.”
The Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies, officially launched in 2022, offers annual programming, including the Ebert Symposium, the Ebert Lecture, a screening series, and will support research grants and travel grants for film studies.
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Dale Eickelman, the Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of Anthropology and Human Relations Emeritus and leader of the Dartmouth College-American University of Kuwait Program, received an honorary degree from Sofia University last month for his academic achievements and contributions to the development of Arab, Middle East and Islamic studies in Bulgaria.
“Eickelman was nominated for the honorary degree of the oldest university in Bulgaria by the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology not only for his high academic achievements, but also for his consistent support of nearly 20 years, during which he contributed to the development of Arab, Middle East and Islamic studies at Sofia University and Bulgaria,” the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency reported.
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Eugene Demidenko, a professor of biomedical data science and of community and family medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine, has received the 2022 Ziegel Prize for his book Advanced Statistics with Applications in R.
The award is given each year by Technometrics, a quarterly journal co-published by the American Society for Quality and the American Statistical Association.