CAL Faculty Honors

We recognize faculty members who received university-level and college level awards and fellowships during 2024–25. This recognition increases the visibility of their work and expertise and bolsters the reputation of the College of Arts & Letters.

In this Section:

University Honorifics

In 2024-25, three faculty members from the College of Arts & Letters were honored with highly competitive university honorifics:

  • Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of English Kathleen Fitzpatrick was named a University Distinguished Professor.
  • Professor of TESOL and Second Language Studies Aline Godfroid was named a Red Cedar Professor.
  • Professor of Film & Media Studies Joshua Yumibe was named an MSU Research Foundation Professor.

These three honors represent a remarkable achievement for the college and demonstrate an important step forward for the visibility of research in the arts and humanities across the university.

University-Wide Fellowships and Awards

College Fellowships and Awards

  • Kirk Astle (WRAC) received the Community Partner Award in 2024.
  • Laura Cloud (AAHD) received the Legacy Lecture Award in 2024.
  • Senta Goertler (LiLaC) received the Faculty Leadership Award in 2024.
  • Natasha Jones (AAAS) received the Faculty Award for Innovation and Leadership in 2024.
  • Chet McLeskey (TDI) was named a 2024-25 CAL Leadership Fellow.
  • Kate Fedewa O’Connor (WRAC) received the Fixed-Term Faculty/Academic Specialist Leadership Excellence Award in 2024.
  • Arthur Versluis (REL) received the Paul Varg Alumni Award in 2024.

External Fellowships, Honors, and Awards

  • Shastri Akella (ENG) won the 2024 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction for “Stray Gods,” and was a runner-up for the 2024 Black Warrior Review prize for “Reva Speaks a New Dialect.” Their story “The Magic Bangle” was re-published in the 2024 Best American Short Fiction and was nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize.
  • Kaveh Askari (ENG) received the Mercator Fellowship from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, in November 2024.
  • Scott Boehm (RCS) was awarded a Fulbright US Scholar Award for the 2025-26 academic year to produce his feature-length film, 2015: Spain’s Year of Change? This film is 10 years in the making and upon its release in 2026, the film will be the first in-depth critical examination of the legacy of a historic moment in Spanish politics and culture in any format, including academic scholarship, television, and cinema.
  • Shlagha Borah (WRAC) won the Miami Book Fair Fellowship in Poetry 2025 and a full scholarship to the Tin House Summer Workshop 2025.
  • Sara Doan (WRAC) received a Beinecke Library Fellowship from Yale University, allowing her to spend two weeks conducting archival research on ACT UP’s HIV/AIDS communications from the 1980s and 1990s to illustrate how activists approached health communication and visual design of activist materials.
  • Heather Douglas (PHL) was named to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee to Revise On Being A Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research, as well as to the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the International Science Council. She was also a Visiting Fellow at Leibniz Universitat Hanover in May 2025.
  • Natasha Jones (AAAS) received the IEEE Professional Communication Society’s 2025 Alfred N. Goldsmith Award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Communication.
  • Catherine Kendig (PHL) has been elected to the executive board of the International Committee for Integrated History and Philosophy of Science, 2024-27.
  • Felix Kronenberg (CeLTA, LiLAC) was selected to serve on the executive council of the Modern Language Association’s Association of Language Departments , 2025-28.
  • Joshua Lam (ENG) received an NEH Summer Stipend Award in 2024.
  • Shawn Loewen (LiLaC) and Masatoshi Sato received a 2025 PROSE Award in Language and Linguistics from the Association for American Publishers for A Practical Guide to Second Language Teaching and Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
  • Kate Hext, Kristin Mahoney (ENG), and Alex Murray received the 2024 Council of Editors of Learned Journals Award for Best New Journal for Cusp: Late 19th– / Early 20th-Century Cultures.
  • Alejandra Márquez (RCS) received the 2025 Plantando Semillas Faculty of the Year Award, which is part of the César E. Chávez and Dolores Huerta Community Leadership Awards presented by MSU’s Office for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion.
  • Casey McArdle (WRAC), Liza Potts (WRAC), and Rebecca Tegtmeyer (AAHD) received the 2025 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award in the category of Best Original Collection of Essays in Technical or Scientific Communication for their article, “Experience Architecture: Developing an Interdisciplinary UX Undergraduate Degree.” Programmatic Perspectives. 14:2 (2024).
  • Derek McNish (THR) was selected to be a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in 2025-2026 to teach and lead intercultural arts collaborations at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, using theatre to foster global dialogue and understanding.
  • Blaire Morseau (REL) received the Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies  Faculty Fellowship from the Newberry Library, August 2024 – May 2025. Morseau was also an Artist-in-Residence for the Long-Term Ecological Research program at the W. K. Kellogg Biological Center in 2025-26.
  • Hannah Olsen (RCS) was awarded the Ida B. Wells Graduate Student Award from the Coordinating Council for Women in History.
  • Nerli Paredes Ruvalcaba (PHL, RISC) was recognized in 2025 for having for one of the top 10 most-cited papers published by the American Journal of Human Biology in 2023 for the co-authored article “Coping mechanisms during the COVID‐19 pandemic and lockdown in metropolitan Johannesburg, South Africa: A qualitative study” (vol. 35, no. 12).
  • Leonora Souza Paula (ENG) was named a Vital Voices Visional Fellow by the Vital Voices Global Partnership, 2024. She was also an invited participant in the United Nations Summit of the Future, held by the United Nations General Assembly in 2024.
  • Robert Pennock (PHL) received the Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award, 2024-25.
  • Elan Pochedley (REL) received the Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies Faculty Fellowship from the Newberry Library, August 2025 – May 2026.
  • Kimberly Priest (WRAC) was awarded the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry for her forthcoming volume, Wolves in Shells, to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2025. She was also named a Charlie Simic Award finalist for “Ecofeminism,” by the Hole in the Head Review, and an Adrienne Rich Prize semi-finalist for “Rage Aria,” by the Beloit Poetry Journal.
  • Marisa Rinkus (TDI) was named a Leadership Advancement Program Fellow by the Great Lakes Leadership Academy (2024).
  • Kelly Salchow-MacArthur (AAHD) received the Life Achievement Award from the United Design Alliance in 2024, and the Gold Award in the Graphis Annual Poster Competition in 2025.
  • Lara Shipley’s (AAHD) book Desire Lines (Overlapse Books, 2023) was shortlisted for the 2024 Fotobus Library Award.
  • d’Ann de Simone (AAHD) was named an Alumni Member at AIR Gallery, Brooklyn, New York.
  • Koen Van Gorp (CeLTA), Emily Heidrich Uebel (CeLTA), Felix Kronenberg (CeLTA, LiLaC), and Dianna Murphy received the Stephen A. Freeman Award from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages  for “How important is studying languages for undergraduate students and why (not) study languages?” (Foreign Language Annals 57.4, Winter 2024). This award recognizes the best published article in 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12783
  • Koen Van Gorp (CeLTA) was named Chair of the TOEFL Committee of Examiners  at Educational Testing Service (ETS), a standing committee of the TOEFL Board, composed of 11 experts in the fields of language teaching, testing and research, which advises the TOEFL Board and ETS on these matters. His term of service will be October 2024-September 2027.
  • Divya Victor (ENG) was selected as a recipient of a 2025 Creative Capital Award for her forthcoming project, Kin, to be published by Graywolf Press. She has also been selected as chair of the Kingsley and Kate Tufts Awards jury.
  • Ann Folino White (THR) received the 2024 Betty Jean Jones Award for career achievement in teaching and mentorship in the field of theatre and performance studies from the American Theatre and Drama Society.
  • Renée Wilmot (AAAS) received the 2024 Arts-Based Educational Research award from the American Educational Research Association.
  • Paula Winke (LiLaC), Xiaowao Zhang, and Steven J. Pierce received the International Language Testing Association Best Article Award for “A closer look at a marginalized test method: Self-assessment as a measure of speaking proficiency” (Studies in Second Language Acquisition 45.2, May 2023). This award, presented in June 2025, recognizes research impact two years after publication.
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