‘Breadth of Talent’

The Academic Senate of UC Santa Barbara has honored 13 faculty members and graduate students for their excellence in teaching and mentorship. Awards are given annually across several categories to recognize outstanding achievements in a range of activities that support the research and the teaching missions of the university.

All of the honorees — including those for 2020 and 2021, when in-person events weren’t possible due to the pandemic — will be recognized at a special reception on Thursday, Sept. 29.

“Each year, the Academic Senate recognizes through its awards the breadth of talent in our faculty and graduate students and the tremendous effort they invest in our university’s research, teaching and mentoring, and in advancing our goals of diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Senate Divisional Chair Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Chemistry & Biochemistry. “Sustaining these efforts in the challenging pandemic-inflected environment of the last two and a half years has been especially difficult, making it even more rewarding for the Senate to acknowledge the contributions of its members at this time.”

Among these recognitions, the Faculty Research Lecturer Award and the Faculty Diversity Award are the Senate's most prestigious. In each case, a single person is selected each year based on their career accomplishments. The selections are often extremely difficult, Scott noted, due to the high quality of the nominees. 

The Faculty Research Lecturer Award, established in 1955, is the highest honor the faculty bestows on one of its members. Receiving the award for 2022 is Shelly Lundberg, a professor of economics who, Scott said, has “transformed the study of household economics through her ground-breaking research on family decision-making with impacts on policy-making for childcare.”

The Faculty Diversity Award, established in 2019, recognizes exceptional contributions to the advancement of diversity and equality. History professor Sherene Seikaly is this year’s recipient. “Her research on barriers to inclusion and justice in the modern Middle East thoroughly infuses both her teaching and her mentoring of early career scholars in the service of greater campus diversity and equity,” Scott said of Seikaly.

The other award categories — and award winners for 2022 — are as follows:

Distinguished Teaching Awards

Gordon Abra — Communication, Sociology

Ken Hiltner — English

Jennifer Y. King — Geography

Jen Martin — Environmental Studies

Danielle R. Whitaker — Education

Vanessa Woods — Psychological & Brain Sciences

Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards

Bhaskar Sarkar — Film and Media Studies

M. Scott Shell — Chemical Engineering

Jill Darlington Sharkey — Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards

Stephanie M. Arguera — Education

Janeva Chung — Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Trevor Auldridge Reveles — Sociology

Hannah Garibaldi — Film and Media Studies