Congratulations to all of our 2020 Honors Day award recipients. We’re thankful for the incredible faculty and staff we have at Birmingham-Southern and for the chance to (virtually) honor them.

Hear video messages from Provost Brad Caskey and Terrence Ingram ’09, our Honors Day speaker. These videos will also be shared on BSC’s social media accounts.

Here are our faculty and staff awards for the 2019-2020 academic year.

The Henry C. Randall Advisor of the Year Award is presented to a faculty or staff member who advises a student organization:

Gina Armstrong ’92, Assistant Professor of the Library, Digital Initiatives Librarian, and BSC Archivist
Faculty Sponsor for Spectrum and the Women’s Soccer Team

Prior to joining the faculty at BSC in 2016, Armstrong worked in collection management and public history at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served internships at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, focused on LGBTQ+ collections. They are currently teaching a queer archiving and digital history class with Dr. Jessica Hines and have taught courses in applied computer science and human rights and conflict studies. During the pandemic, Armstrong is collecting COVID-19 journals from the BSC community to preserve in the Library archives. Read more here.

The President’s Service Award is presented to members of the campus community who show commitment, character, service, and leadership:

Greg Colegrove, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology
Kate Hayden, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Amber Wagner, Assistant Professor of Creative and Applied Computing

Colegrove, Hayden, and Wagner have led the charge to provide faculty, staff, and students with helpful resources during BSC’s transition online. Colegrove and IT have worked hard to maintain BSC’s technology systems, and Hayden and Wagner have worked together to lead workshops and tutorials on the online learning platforms and tools now used on a daily basis. Read more here.

The Omicron Delta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes a faculty member who has attained excellence in all aspects of teaching:

Mark Schantz, Professor of History and Department Chair

Trained as a historian of nineteenth century U.S. social, cultural, and labor history, Schantz has also developed a particular interest in African-American history and Africana studies, how films (particularly mainstream dramas) shape public perceptions of history, and the history of American medicine and attitudes toward death and dying. He is also interested in American music history and the music of Bob Dylan in particular. Schantz is known for his “Like a Rolling Stone” E-Term course, which focuses on the life and work of Bob Dylan and often results in the formation of a class band. Read more here.

The Provost’s Award for Diversity in the Classroom honors a faculty member who excels in incorporating diversity into their instruction and interaction with students:

Jessica Hines, Assistant Professor of English

Hines specializes in the literature and culture of late medieval England, with a particular interest in women’s and gender studies, as well as medieval and classical theories of ethics, aesthetics, and emotions. She is also interested in the social and gender politics of the particular vocabulary that developed in Passion narratives in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams Faculty Scholarship Award is given to an outstanding faculty member who has excelled in scholarship:

Guangjun Qu, Associate Professor of Economics

Qu’s research interests cover a variety of topics in the fields of international and development economics with current emphasis on the role of corruption and anticorruption. His ongoing research projects assess the effectiveness of anticorruption efforts made by governments, for which he conducts a content analysis of newspaper articles to gauge the intensity of recent anticorruption campaigns in China.

View the full Honors Day 2020 Program to see other awards.