Five Vanderbilt professors were honored April 17 at the Student Life Center during Spring Faculty Assembly for their skill and success as teachers. The honorees are:

The Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor Award to honor faculty whose contributions span multiple academic disciplines
David Wood, Centennial Professor of Philosophy
Wood has worked to create groups and conferences that explore wide-ranging issues such as war, environmental justice and animal rights. He moderates “Thinking Out of the Lunch Box” series at the Downtown Public Library; works with the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture’s Ecology and Spirituality research group and has published three books with six more under construction. Wood represents a life in balance by epitomizing the collaborative future of university study and the diversity of thought which Vanderbilt upholds as our ideal. 

The Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award for a scholar whose work has and will continue to have wide influence in the solution of contemporary social problems
Dale Clark Farran, Professor of Education and Psychology
Farran's passion is improving early childhood education with a focus on issues of poverty and disabilities and their effects on the development of young children. She was director of The Susan Gray School for five years, has been named Professional of the Year by the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Disabilities, has coordinated and led the Tennessee Pre-K Summer Institute and has developed a preschool mathematics curriculum with her colleague Mark Lipsey that is currently implemented in Metro Nashville Public Schools and in the Metro Action Commission Head Start program. 

The Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award for distinguished accomplishments at furthering the aims of Vanderbilt University
Daniel B. Cornfield, Professor of Sociology
Although now focusing his energy as founding director of the new transdisciplinary Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies, Cornfield has had great impact on a number of programs including: enhancing the reputation of our sociology department’s research on labor issues while he served as chair; putting together an interdisciplinary, inter-university team to study Nashville’s immigrant community and its social services needs while serving as acting director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies; and editing the scholarly journal Work and Occupations.

The Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching 
James A. Lovensheimer, Assistant Professor of Musicology
Lovensheimer is an accomplished, charismatic, and highly versatile teacher in courses as diverse as musical theater and country music to Gustav Mahler and jazz.  He uses an interdisciplinary context to demonstrate the cultural value of music at the intersection of political and sociological histories, and his students praise him for giving them, through music, a new appreciation of the social history of the U.S.

The Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching 
Stephen G. Buckles, Senior Lecturer in Economics
Buckles takes what can be a dry and confusing subject and makes it accessible and understandable. He consistently scores high on student evaluations for “instructor overall” as well as “intellectual challenge.” He is not only a scholar of economics but also an activist for the teaching of economics and an advocate for how economics can be taught to promote student understanding to the highest possible measure. 

Contact: Missy Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
                 melissa.r.pankake@vanderbilt.edu