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.
***
The International Society for the Performing Arts has awarded Mary Lou Aleskie the 2024 Patrick Hayes Award for transformative leadership.
In its announcement, the ISPA called the Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director of the Hopkins Center for the Arts “a visionary leader” whose “leadership role at organizations across the United States is only matched by her commitment to mentoring young professionals in the performing arts.”
The award honors the legacy of the late impresario and Washington Performing Arts Society founder Patrick Hayes, the first president of what would ultimately become the ISPA.
In attendance at the Jan. 11 awards presentation at the ISPA’s 75th annual congress in New York was Aleskie’s mentor, Benson Puah, the former CEO of The Esplanade in Singapore.
***
Professor of English Jeff Sharlet’s book The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War was named by the National Book Critics Circle last week as one of five finalists for 2023 nonfiction book of the year.
Sharlet, a past winner of a National Magazine Award for Reporting, traveled the country to better understand, and chronicle, the roots of the extremism from the far right.
***
Eric Alpert, a graduate student in microbiology and cell biology at the Guarini School for Graduate and Advanced Studies, won the American Society for Cell Biology’s 2023 Elevator Pitch Contest. The contest is designed to help scientists develop the skills to communicate their research to the general public. Presented in just under two minutes, Alpert’s pitch succinctly explained his work as a member of Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Amanda Amodeo’s cell biology lab, which, he said, “studies how cells decide when to grow and when to divide.” Understanding the processes that regulate cell growth has implications for research into diseases such as cancer.
***
Professor of Theater Laura Edmondson has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award provides $60,000 toward Edmondson’s research for a book on how the arts—including theater, dance, poetry, film, and performance arts—are used to address themes of violence and illness in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
***
Undergraduates in a 2021 New England domestic study program co-led by Flora Krivak-Tetley—a postdoctoral fellow in the Guarini School’s Ecology, Evolution, Environment, and Society program and lecturer in environmental studies—have recently published the findings of their comparative study of the effectiveness of food charities versus market-based food distribution programs.
The study, which appears in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, looked at supermarkets, restaurants, food shelves, and soup kitchens in the Brattleboro, Vt., region, and found community and other benefits to the charity model that markets could not replicate.
In addition to Krivak-Tetley and field instructor Sam Bliss, the authors include Alexandra Bramsen ’22, Raven Graziano ’23, Ava Hill ’22, and Saharay Perez Sahagun ’23.
***
Patricia Lopez, an assistant professor of geography, has been awarded the 2024 Distinguished Teaching Honors Award from the American Association of Geographers. Lopez was recognized “for teaching, mentoring, and pedagogical accomplishments” that “are clearly shaping the future of geography as a discipline,” according to the award citation. The award will be presented at the association’s annual meeting in Honolulu in April.
***
Ben Ross, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology and a member of the Philip Hanlon and Gail Gentes Cluster for Personalized Treatments for Cystic Fibrosis has received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The grant will support research aimed at understanding how altered gut bacteria might impact the health of infants with cystic fibrosis.
