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Four
Faculty Named 2007 Sherrerd Award Winners
Four faculty members were
named last week as winners of the Kathleen Compton Sherrerd ’54
and John J. F. Sherrerd Prizes for Distinguished Teaching.
They are: Mary Harrington, Tippit
Professor in Life Sciences; Sabina Knight, associate
professor of East Asian languages and literatures; Borjana
Mikic, associate professor of engineering; and Kevin Quashie,
associate professor of Afro-American studies.
The Sherrerd Teaching Award is given annually to Smith faculty
members in recognition of their distinguished teaching records
and demonstrated enthusiasm and excellence.
The four faculty members will be honored at a presentation
of the award on Tuesday, October 23.
Harrington joined the psychology department at Smith
in 1987 after completing her doctorate at Dalhousie University
in Nova Scotia. She worked with other Smith faculty to
help launch the neuroscience major in 1997. Harrington
teaches courses in experimental methods, both for psychology
and neuroscience majors, cognitive neuroscience, and biological rhythms. Her course “Brain
States” is
an exploration of how states of consciousness arise from
differential brain activity. Harrington’s research
specialty involves the control of circadian rhythms by environmental
cues, and many Smith undergraduates have collaborated with
her in this research. She has published numerous articles
and speaks frequently on the circadian system.
Knight came to Smith in 1998 after studying and teaching
at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University
of Wisconsin, Madison. A specialist in contemporary Chinese
fiction, she also studies French, Russian and comparative
literature as well as Chinese and Western philosophy. She
is devoted to contemplative learning grounded in close
reading and writing practice. Her courses include “Gendered
Fate,” “Health and Illness: Literary Explorations,” and “Intimacy:
Dreams, Disappointments and Practices of Desire.” She
recently published The Heart of Time: Moral Agency
in Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, and is working
on a cross-cultural literary exploration of conscious dying.
Knight is a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for
East Asian Research at Harvard University.
Mikic came to Smith in 2001 from the University of Virginia
to help build the Picker Engineering Program. She teaches
introduction to engineering design, skeletal biomechanics,
strength of materials, and failure analysis. Her research
focuses on elucidating key factors that influence the establishment,
maintenance, and restoration of biomechanical function
in the tissues of the skeletal system. Mikic has received
several grants in support of her research, including a
$1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health
to study the role of a particular family of signaling molecules
in tendon maintenance and repair. Mikic is the 2007-08
chair of the Liberal Education Division of the American
Society for Engineering Education, and serves on Smith’s
Faculty Council.
Quashie teaches cultural studies and theory in the department
of Afro-American Studies, where he is chair, and in the
Program for the Study of Women and Gender. He has taught
courses on the Harlem Renaissance, death and dying in black
culture, and black queer studies; and will soon teach a
seminar on Toni Morrison, American identity and love, and
a course on the black seventies. After earning his doctorate
in American literature from Arizona State University, he
edited a collection of writings by black writers, New
Bones, and wrote a book on black women and cultural
theory. Currently, Quashie is working on a book about what
the concept of quiet can mean to how we think about black
culture. In 2001, he was awarded the College’s Junior
Faculty Teaching Award.
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Mary
Harrington
Sabina
Knight
Borjana
Mikic
Kevin
Quashie
