Faculty awards celebrate excellence in teaching, mentorship and service within A&S
Arts & Sciences proudly recognizes faculty members at all ranks for their outstanding achievements, not only as researchers, but also as instructors, mentors and active contributors to the life of their departments or programs, A&S and William & Mary as a whole. Conferred by both A&S and the Office of the Provost, the following awards reflect the ten honorees’ dedication to student learning and professional development as well as the university’s mission, grounded in a liberal arts education.
Thomas Ashley Graves, Jr. Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching
Aiko Kitamura, teaching professor of Japanese studies, is this year’s recipient of the university’s Graves Award, conferred at Commencement to a faculty member with more than ten years of service. Funded annually by Thomas Ashley Graves, Jr., president of W&M from 1971 to 1985, the award recognizes Kitamura’s excellence in student instruction. She was one of the prime movers behind the W&M Japanese studies major, and her teaching in the Japanese language, at all levels, is distinguished by cultural immersion activities and a student-centered approach that involves direct and tailored interaction with each member of her classes. She empowers her students to set personal learning goals and independently chart their progress toward language and cultural proficiency. In the process, they are transformed “from passive learners to critical thinkers,” in the words of one the many former students who have effusively praised her instruction. Kitamura has also supervised numerous teaching assistants, some of whom have gone on to teach Japanese courses modeled on her own, and she has regularly taught the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures’ foreign language teaching practicum course. She is equally committed to learning opportunities outside the classroom, having organized the Japanese Book Club, served on several honors committees and advised the Japanese Language House since 2009.
Shirley Aceto Award
Shannon White, associate director of W&M’s Center for Geospatial Analysis (CGA), has been honored with this award, presented annually by the university to a member of instructional or professional faculty “who demonstrates an exceptional commitment to excellence in service to the campus community.” A prolific scholar with an impressive 25 publications in multiple academic journals, White has also distinguished herself as a leader at W&M. She has served the university as president of the Professionals & Professional Faculty Assembly and as a representative for faculty and staff on the Board of Visitors. She assumed her current leadership role at the CGA at a challenging time, at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, she has spearheaded efforts to reinvent the center as a welcoming space for the W&M community, promoted research and teaching collaborations with faculty members and gone above and beyond to assist students with spatial analysis and mapping projects. Former CGA fellows have hailed White as an asset in launching their careers by helping them develop critical skills and mentoring them in post-graduate professional roles at the center.
Arts & Sciences Faculty Awards for Teaching Excellence
Jody Lynn Allen Ph.D. ’07, associate professor of history and Robert Francis Engs Director of The Lemon Project since 2010, is the first of three recipients of this honor, conferred based on nominations by the Student Assembly’s Undergraduate Council and the A&S Graduate Student Association. The award recognizes exceptional effort and innovation in teaching and mentorship across classrooms, laboratories and independent studies and other research experiences. Through her leadership of The Lemon Project, Allen has become, in the words of history department chair Tuska Benes, “one of the most influential educators of her generation,” spearheading pathbreaking campus and community outreach on W&M’s troubled history with slavery and providing a model for other universities grappling with similar legacies. Much of her teaching has built on her Lemon Project work, including a course on memorialization, a capstone seminar that engages undergraduates in research on local African American communities, and numerous independent studies. She has likewise incorporated recent research on the Williamsburg Bray School into a seminar on African American education in Virginia. Though the topics Allen covers are often challenging and painful to study, her courses have garnered consistent praise in a department renowned for excellence in teaching. She has translated her research and teaching into practice as a member of W&M’s Presidential Working Group on Principles for Naming and Renaming and the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Commission to Study Slavery.
Michael Daise, Endowed Professor of Judaic Studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies, has also been honored with an A&S Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. His leadership role in his department and impressive rate of publication have not detracted from his commitment to teaching rigorous, innovative courses and advising students on honors theses and independent studies. Students regularly credit his engaging but demanding “Christian Origins” course with inspiring them to major in religious studies. Daise has also developed a slate of upper-level courses, many incorporating his own research and all garnering among the highest student evaluations in the department. He has mentored numerous student researchers, creating opportunities even for those who do not share his mastery of multiple ancient and modern languages to make active contributions to the field. As a founding member of the Judaic Studies Program, he revived a long-dormant fund to support research collaborations between faculty members and students, enabling honors thesis writers to travel internationally for their work.
Chunying Lin, associate teaching professor of Chinese studies, is the final recipient of the 2025 A&S Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. Mainly teaching elementary to upper-intermediate language courses, she is an exceptionally popular instructor. As the faculty advisor for the Chinese Language House, she works with the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures’ International Fellows to create stimulating cultural programming for students. From 2021 to 2023, she demonstrated her innovation as co-principal investigator and onsite teacher for W&M’s Project Global Officer, an immersive language training and experiential cultural learning program in Taiwan organized in collaboration with the Reves Center for International Studies, the Department of Military Science and Taiwan’s National Central University. On campus at W&M, Lin generously devotes her time to student learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom, including helping to establish a bilingual (Chinese and English) newsletter for the Chinese Program, organizing an online film festival during the COVID-19 pandemic and providing invaluable information on fellowships, teaching assistantships and internships offered by the Taiwanese government. Her impact on students is nowhere clearer than in her outstanding course evaluations, which characterize her teaching as highly accessible, inclusive and engaging. One student described Lin as “a blessing,” while another remarked, “She single handedly sparked my love of Chinese language and culture.”
Arts & Sciences Awards for Faculty Governance
Hannah Rosen, associate professor of history & American studies and director of the American Studies Program, is the first of two tenured faculty members honored with this annual award, presented in recognition of their efforts to help their colleagues through committee work and other forms of service to their departments or programs, A&S and the university as a whole. Rosen has an extensive record of leadership in both history and American studies, especially on issues of racial justice and navigating institutional change. She served for four years as director of graduate studies for American studies before assuming leadership of the program as a whole, chaired the program’s Diversity, Equity and Justice Committee, and currently sits on the history department’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. She also chairs the Tyler Endowment Steering Committee for the Department of History, planning restorative justice initiatives relating to W&M’s historical enslavement and exclusion of Black and Indigenous Americans. She has played a pivotal role in developing curricula on race and equity at W&M as a member of the Provost’s Curriculum Enhancement Working Group on “Race Across the Curriculum” in 2020-2021 and co-chair of the Ad Hoc Implementation Committee for COLL 199, which developed the new COLL 350 course “Difference, Equity, Justice.” She also serves as a faculty fellow at W&M’s Center for Racial & Social Justice, where she is developing a public-facing and policy-oriented research project on race and gender in African American history. In addition to this tremendous service to the university, Rosen has taken on the substantial responsibility of co-chairing the Future of Arts & Sciences Coordinating Committee, overseeing the formation of proposals for such monumental transitions as the renaming of W&M’s largest academic unit as the College of Arts & Sciences, recently approved by the Board of Visitors.
Magali Compan, professor of French & Francophone studies, has also received a 2025 A&S Award for Faculty Governance. Compan has drawn on her wide-ranging research in Francophone culture to build programs supporting curricular diversity at W&M. She helped develop the interdisciplinary Africana Studies Program as chair of its predecessor, the African Studies Program, and played a similarly influential role in crafting the global studies major. Her ambitious COLL 300 and COLL 350 courses in African Francophone, Négritude and Créolité studies have shaped her students into creative thinkers and compassionate global citizens. As chair of subcommittees of the International Studies Advisory Committee and Educational Policy Committee, she has further worked to reimagine the COLL curriculum. Through her work on W&M’s African Studies Film Festival (2004) and French & Francophone Film Festival (2006-2016), Compan has supervised students in making cultural programming at the university accessible to the wider Williamsburg community. She has also impressively contributed to governance in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures, directing the French & Francophone Studies Program twice and W&M’s summer study abroad program in Montpellier, France, six times, along with serving on several committees and co-developing the Global Village.
Arts & Sciences Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring
David Armstrong, Chancellor Professor of Physics, has been honored with this award, made possible through the generosity of the Graduate Studies Advisory Board, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to graduate student mentorship in the areas of scholarship, teaching and professional development. During a long and distinguished career at W&M, Armstrong has supervised 18 doctoral and master’s students, as well as 31 senior undergraduates. His mentees celebrate his compassion and support, his openness to questions, his genuine curiosity and interest in their ideas and his instinct to treat doctoral students as colleagues. He has succeeded in cultivating a community among his graduate students during weekly meetings, providing a structured space for them to share their work with one another and benefit from each other’s insights. Armstrong’s students also deeply appreciate his attention to their professionalization, as he makes introductions to facilitate networking within their field, helps them master marketable technical skills and walks them through such topics as publishing in scholarly journals and pursuing postdoctoral fellowships. He has regularly gone above and beyond to make time to help his students learn and excel as scholars, and several credit him with guiding them toward success in securing competitive grants and publications in their time at W&M.
Arts & Sciences Murphy Award
Tyler K. Meldrum, associate professor and director of undergraduate research in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded this recognition, made possible by the generosity of Jennifer and Devin Murphy, in honor of outstanding integration of his research with undergraduate and graduate student teaching. Since arriving at W&M in 2013, Meldrum has published 13 articles on his research on single-sided nuclear magnetic resonance technology in leading peer-reviewed journals, with 17 W&M students as co-authors. These publications have received impressive numbers of citations, highlighting the far-reaching impact of Meldrum’s collaborations with his students. His commitment to work with undergraduates was previously recognized when he was selected as a 2023 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, a competitive national honor awarded to faculty in the chemical sciences with an outstanding body of student-assisted research. As director of undergraduate research, he has helped hone students’ skills as scientists through research fairs, the addition of more extensive research and safety training to the chemistry curriculum and opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to share their work with general audiences. Thanks to his leadership of the Sci-Fri Program, the Integrated Science Center has offered scientific talks and demonstrations to more than 700 attendees at its Friday open houses in the past two years. Meldrum’s winter study abroad program in Heidelberg, Germany, has allowed him to extend immersive learning experiences for W&M students overseas, introducing them to some of the world’s most advanced research facilities.
Lambert Scholarship
Jerry (Jay) Watkins III, teaching professor of history, has been recognized with this award, established in 1981 to support respected and effective teacher-scholars. A specialist in modern U.S. history, with emphases on the Cold War, the American South, LGBTQ+ history and the history of sexuality, Watkins has enriched his department’s offerings with 11 courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including one of the earliest COLL 350 courses in A&S. His teaching regularly inspires effusive praise from his students, and demand for his courses is astronomical. In fall 2024, he taught the courses with both the longest and third-longest waitlists in all of A&S. Watkins’s courses are regularly cross-listed with American studies, gender, sexuality & women’s studies, and theatre, highlighting his breadth as a scholar and instructor. The same principles that animate his teaching inform his extraordinary service to his department, the university and the wider community. He currently chairs the Teaching Faculty Committee for A&S, recently served on W&M’s Presidential Working Group on Principles for Naming and Renaming (where he was pivotal in the renaming of Boswell Hall in honor of alumnus and LGBTQ+ advocate John E. Boswell ’69) and has worked as a member of the organizing committee of the Virginia LGBTQ+ History Consortium and as an oral history consultant for the LGBT Center of Bay County, Florida.
We are proud to honor these outstanding colleagues for their exceptional contributions to their departments and programs, Arts & Sciences and the university.