The University’s most prestigious awards—The President's Excellence Awards—recognize especially meritorious research, teaching, and innovative efforts by individual faculty and academic departments or units.
Faculty IP Innovation and Commercialization Award Recipient:
SHANE FARRITOR, PH.D.
Department of Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Dr. Shane Farritor is the David and Nancy Lederer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.Dr. Farritor received his bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a masters and doctorate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Farritor co-founded the Virtual Incision Corporation with Dmitry Oleynikov, M.D., FACS. Headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, Virtual Incision is creating MIRA, a first-of-its-kind miniature robotic surgery platform. This product is based on research conducted as faculty memebrs at the University of Nebraska. These miniature robotic devices are placed inside the body during surgery, weighing only two pounds, they can be easily set up in any operating room. The design allows surgeons to obtain full multi-quadrant access without the need of docking and re-docking a large external platform.
Dr. Farritor and Oleynikov are on a mission to simplify robotically assisted surgery so more patients and surgeons can access its benefits every day. MIRA is currently in FDA clinical trials under an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) and is being first studied for bowel resection.
Dr. Farritor is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Prior to his work at the university, he studied at the Kennedy Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He holds over 170 patents and has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles in the field of robotic
Outstanding Research and Creative Activity (ORCA) Award Recipients:
ORCA recognizes individual faculty members for outstanding research or creative activity of national or international significance.
HOWARD FOX, M.D., PH.D.
Department of Neurological Sciences
University of Nebraska Medical Center-Lincoln
Dr. Howard Fox received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Biophysics from The Johns Hopkins University and his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Following his post-doctoral work at Cold Spring Harbor Labs and Anatomic Pathology residency and fellowship at UCSF, he began his independent research career in 1990 at The Scripps Research Institute. In 2008, he moved to the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) to expand the translational aspects of his work. He has served in several leadership roles for the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. He is currently the principal investigator of the Data Coordinating Center and leads the Scientific Advisory Group for the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium (NNTC).
He serves as co-chair of the steering committee for a consortium at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, co-directs the National Institute of Mental Health's Chronic HIV Infection and Aging center, and is the associate director of the Great Plains IDeA Clinical and Translational Research center. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Neurological Sciences and Senior Associate Dean for Research and Development for the College of Medicine at UNMC. Dr. Fox's work focuses on knowledge learned from the SIV model of neuroHIV and its applications to HIV infection of the brain and other organs. He has applied lessons learned from these fields to Parkinson's and Alzheimers disease and has published over 200 peer-reviewed research manuscripts.
Dr. Fox has always been very involved in serving the community, including leading several 501(c)3 organizations with a focus on children, and helping in the start-up of the UNMC High School Alliance.
JORDAN STUMP, PH.D.
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Jordan Stump is a Cather Professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages. He specializes in twentieth-century and contemporary literature. He is the author of two studies on the novels of Raymond Queneau (Naming and Unnaming and The Other Book). His true calling is literary translation, a vocation he discovered after he was hired to UNL in 1992 and found himself in a university with a world-class press heavily invested in the publication of foreign contemporary writing. Thanks to the encouragement of Bill Regier, then director of the University of Nebraska Press, he published his first translations—three short novels by the Marie Redonnet. He has since published nearly thirty translations from French, with presses such as Archipelago Books, Yale University Press, and Knopf Books. His preference is for contemporary works of stylistic adventurousness. He’s also made occasional forays into the nineteenth century and recently collaborated with his colleague, Nora Peterson, on a bilingual collection of fairy tales written by women in early eighteenth-century France. In recent years, he’s become particularly devoted to translating the novels of Marie NDiaye, one of France’s most challenging and dazzling contemporary writers, and the memoirs of the Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga. His translation of Claude Simon’s The Jardin des Plantes was awarded the French-American Foundation’s Translation Prize in 2001, and his translation of Marie NDiaye’s The Cheffe won the American Literary Translators’ Association’s Annual Prize in 2020. In 2006 he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, in recognition of his contribution to the spread of French and Francophone culture.
Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award (OTICA) Recipients:
OTICA recognizes individual faculty members who have demonstrated meritorious and sustained records of excellence and creativity in teaching.
ROBERT BROOKE, PH.D.
Department of English
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Robert E. Brooke is the John E. Weaver Professor of English, director of the Nebraska Writing Project, and a member of the Secondary English Education faculty in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education. Brooke focuses on place-conscious education. He invites educators to connect their students’ reading and writing to local communities in the Great Plains, then spiral out to national and global issues. In his partnership with Nebraska teachers, he establishes three-way collaborations between university students, local secondary and elementary classes, and regional organizations such as Homestead National Park and the Center for People in Need.
Two of his books feature teachers’ accounts of these partnerships, Rural Voices: Place-Conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing and Writing Suburban Citizenship: Place-Conscious Education and the Conundrum of Suburbia. His graduate seminar, Place Conscious Teaching, has guided several hundred teachers in the creation of units for their schools and community
Brooke was named director of the Nebraska Writing Project in 1994, after facilitating the summer institute for the preceding ten years. The Nebraska Writing Project generates over 11,000 contact hours with teachers every year, through three kinds of programs:
- Immersive institutes for teachers of writing in all subject areas and at all grade levels, such as the annual Embedded Institute at Gretna Schools.
- Continuity programs sponsoring further teacher inquiry for educators already associated with NeWP, such as the Bones of Place teacher workshops offered with Agate Fossil Beds National Historical Site.
- Youth and community programs, such as the elementary ‘I Love to Write’ summer workshops and the Nebraska Warrior Writers weekly workshops for veterans.
Brooke has been previously recognized for his teaching with the John E. Weaver Professorship, the Hazel McClymont Teaching Fellow Award, the CAS Community Engagement Award, the National Council of the Teachers of English Intellectual Freedom Award, and two CAS Distinguished Teaching Awards.
VANESSA BARRETT GORMAN, PH.D.
Department of History & Department of Classics and Religious Studies
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Vanessa Gorman is a Professor of History and Classics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and offers courses in ancient Greek and Roman history, Athenian democracy, and ancient Greek language.
She is devoted to teaching her students the craft of writing an argument that is clear, persuasive, and well-documented.
Her first book, Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia, was the recipient of the Outstanding Publication Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. Her second, Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature, was co-authored with her husband and fellow-classicist, Associate Professor Robert Gorman. She has since created an open access, digital collection of Greek sentence diagrams. It is the world’s largest single-annotator repository in any language. Using the resulting data, she has been collaborating with Robert Gorman to invent revolutionary methods of identifying authorship based on measuring the frequency of grammatical structures. She also pioneered an innovative approach to teaching languages. After working with an international team of developers and classicists to create unique software and other digital tools, she has adapted those tools to the classroom to provide her students with a deeper, more transferable understanding of how language functions.
She helped shepherd the history department to a university-wide Departmental Teaching Award in 2017. She also leads the team that won a three-year Department Strategic Funding Award from the Center for Transformative Teaching at UNL in 2022. This grant is dedicated to reimagining the first-year history student experience by exploring intertwined themes in world history while cultivating diverse viewpoints and global awareness.
Innovation, Development and Engagement Award (IDEA) Recipients:
IDEA recognizes faculty members who have extended their academic expertise beyond the boundaries of the university in ways that have enriched the broader community.
JUDY DIAMOND, PH.D.
University Libraries
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Judy Diamond has dedicated her career to creating innovative and informal science education outreach programs and conducting research on the behavior of wild birds. During her time at UNL, she secured $10 million in grant funding to support outreach projects on human biology, viruses, Antarctic climate change, and evolution. Her initiatives foster public education about cutting-edge biological research through unique museum and media deliverables.
Her projects conduct learning research to understand impacts on young people, and she shares findings through peer-reviewed publications. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Judy created exhibit galleries about current evolution research at five museums and published an activity book. Working with colleagues at Harvard University, she developed an exhibit that combines innovative visualizations with multi-user interactive tabletop technology to feature the phylogenetic tree of life. Most recently, she was awarded National Science Foundation funding to create comics that help young people better understand the COVID-19 pandemic. This added to her National Institutes of Health grants where she led teams to create outreach materials about viruses and bacteria. She was creator and project director of Wonderwise Women in Science, an award-winning multimedia curriculum project featuring the research of female scientists.
Judy continues to conduct research on the social behavior of wild birds. Originally funded by the National Geographic Society for her research on New Zealand parrots, she is a leading authority on comparative studies of bird play. She has made significant contributions to the public understanding of science through her books Thinking Like a Parrot (University of Chicago Press, 2019 and University of California Press, 1999), and Concealing Coloration in Animals (Harvard University Press 2013), and through her research and popular publications.
MARK SVOBODA, PH.D.
Department of Natural Resources
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
As Director of the National Drought Mitigation Center’s (NDMC), Dr. Mark Svoboda administers and oversees the center’s staff and mission. A climatologist by trade, Dr. Svoboda works closely with federal, tribal, state, basin, local and international officials and governments on drought monitoring early warning information systems, drought risk management planning, and collaborative research. Dr. Svoboda is also the co-founder, and one of the principal authors, of the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. His work with the Core Team of the Western Governors’ Association led to the development of a report and recommendations on creating a National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) for the United States.
He is currently a member of the World Meteorological Organization/Global Water Partnership Integrated Drought Management Programme’s Advisory Panel and serves on the NIDIS Executive Council. Here at home, he serves as a member of the Governor’s Climate Assessment Response Committee. Dr. Svoboda was recently selected to serve as a member of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) Intergovernmental Working Group (IWG) and Science Policy Interface (SPI) teams where he serves as a co-chair for their drought working groups.
Dr. Svoboda was also appointed to serve as a drought preparedness working group co-leader for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Framework on Water Scarcity in Agriculture (WASAG). He is internationally known for his drought monitoring and early warning and risk management work. He has been a keynote speaker, principal investigator, consultant, advisory board member, and invited expert for activities in over 65 countries, regions, and organizations. Dr. Svoboda completed his bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. .
Inclusive Excellence Collaboration Award (IECA) Recipient:
IECA honors sustained, outstanding contributions in diversity and inclusion between two or more University of Nebraska academic and/or administrative units or campuses that move the university system toward inclusive excellence.
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN SCIENCES
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Racial Literacy Roundtable, facilitated by the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was co-created by faculty from Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education, and Child, Youth and Family Studies, in collaboration with the Teacher Scholars Academy. Graduate and undergraduate students from both departments have joined in leading the effort by providing facilitation for roundtable conversations.
The Racial Literacy Roundtable was developed as an opportunity for intentional, facilitated conversations to occur among students, faculty, and staff regarding race and racism. These events were developed for preservice teachers, as well as students, faculty, and staff across the College of Education and Human Sciences.
Since the Fall of 2019, the Racial Literacy Roundtable Leadership Team has successfully hosted 21 roundtables and four webinars to launch Black History Month in 2022. Guest speakers at our roundtable events have included high school students, UNL student organizations, scholars from varying disciplines and institutions, community activists, and local teachers.
Initial results and participant feedback suggest that the roundtable events are having a positive effect and meeting their intended goals. The Racial Literacy Roundtables are working to help participants develop skills to challenging topics alongside developing an open and positive dispositions towards difference that leads to further engagement across diverse communities.
University-wide Departmental Teaching Award (UDTA) Recipient:
UDTA recognizes departments or units within the university that have made unique and significant contributions to NU’s teaching efforts and that have demonstrated outstanding commitment to the education of students at the undergraduate, graduate or professional levels.
CHILD, YOUTH AND FAMILY STUDIES
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Child, Youth and Family Studies (CYAF), housed in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Education and Human Sciences, has the sole responsibility for the CEHS undergraduate Bachelor of Science degrees in Human Development and Family Science, Inclusive Early Childhood Education, Early Childhood Education in a Mobile Society, and Family and Consumer Sciences Education.
CYAF is home to two on-campus master’s degree programs and two on-campus doctoral specializations. The department also offers five completely online master’s programs and four online graduate certificate programs. The department oversees 430 undergraduate students, 64 master's students, and 32 students actively pursuing doctoral degrees or certifications. Students are supported by 35 full-time faculty members and 8 adjunct faculty members who contribute to the teaching and success of students and programs.
CYAF is also home to the Ruth Staples Child Development Laboratory, which provides opportunities for observational and experiential learning for students within the program. The department also offers the Couple and Family Clinic, the only Marriage and Family Therapy training program in the U.S. providing mental health services to rural underserved communities. The department’s commitment to individual and family well-being is central to its academic work in teaching, research, collaboration, service, professional preparation, extension, and outreach. The scholarship of teaching is at the heart of these endeavors and forms the cornerstone for providing classroom and field-based education.