HCAS Announces President’s Distinguished Professor Awards of Excellence

Andrea Nevins, Ph.D., Interim Dean of the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS) has announced the selections for the President’s Distinguished Professor Awards of Excellence for the college. Considering the merger of the former College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, two faculty were selected. Kate Waites, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Humanities and Politics (DHP) was selected from the former CAHSS. Aurelian Tartar, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biological Sciences (DBS) was selected from the former Halmos.

Of this honor, Waites said, “I was stunned and delighted to learn that I was being awarded the Distinguished Professor of the 2019-20, and deeply grateful to our department chair, Dr. David Kilroy, for his nomination. I am also most appreciative of my students who inspire me and ask me not to be complacent, and to always be better. This is such an honor, honestly, especially given the fact that I work alongside so many talented and worthy colleagues. It is especially gratifying because this award comes in my third, and final decade of teaching at NSU. I won the award twice before. The first time was in 1991, in the early years of my career and the college’s formation, and again in 2007, in my second decade of teaching. I feel most fortunate to be awarded this honor a third time in my final decade of teaching.

As faculty members, we are constantly challenged to do and be better—in the classroom by our students, and in our diverse and vibrant university community by the call to service. We are also driven by our curiosity, and our desire to continue to learn and grow as scholars and make contributions to our respective fields. In that sense, we are, ourselves, perennial students who serve as role models for those who enter our classrooms. Lucky us. Lucky me. This award is the cherry on top of a richly rewarding cake.”

DHP chair, David Kilroy, Ph.D. said of Waites, “Dr. Waites contributes to the intellectual and creative rigor of the NSU community and surrounding areas in immediate ways by participating in public series, such as the NSU Faculty Symposium and Ted Talk-x at NSU, and on-campus performances such as those produced by the South Florida Irish Theater. She stands for human rights, over the years having committed herself to opening conversations at NSU, as the founder and director for the Women’s Resource Institute (1995-98) and architect for the Gender Studies Minor in the Department of Literature and Modern Languages.

Tartar indicated that, “I am honored to receive this award and would like to thank my colleagues for their support.” His department chair, Emily Schmitt Lavin, Ph.D., said of Tartar,

“Through his collaborations, Dr. Tartar has been successful at bringing in significant extramural funding (~$900,000) from federal agencies (US Dept. of Agriculture, US Dept. of Education and US Dept. of Defense) to support his and his students’ research in the field of genomics. Specifically, these funds have helped support more than 10 undergraduate students working in his lab over the past five years as well as three master’s thesis students. Undergraduate students were able to be published on his peer-reviewed research as either lead or co-authors in journals including, Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2014) and BMC Microbiology (2016). All three of the master’s students in his lab had their research published in peer reviewed journals including Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing (2015), Scientific Reports (2014), and Journal of Circadian Rhythms (2016).”

HCAS congratulates these two outstanding professors and extends deep appreciation for their contributions to the college, the university, and to their respective fields.