Three Faculty Members Honored for Their Teaching

Three faculty members were named recently as winners of the Kathleen Compton Sherrerd ’54 and John J. F. Sherrerd Prizes for Distinguished Teaching.

They are: Michael Barresi, assistant professor of biological sciences; Floyd Cheung, associate professor of English language and literature; and Jennifer Guglielmo, associate professor of history.

The Sherrerd Teaching Award is given annually to Smith faculty members in recognition of their distinguished teaching records and demonstrated enthusiasm and excellence.

The award was established in 2002 with a generous contribution to Smith by the late Kathleen Sherrerd ’54 and John Sherrerd. Their donation was given with the specific purpose of initiating an annual prize to recognize outstanding teaching at Smith.

The three 2012 Sherrerd Award recipients will be honored during a reception and presentation of the awards in October, open to the Smith community. 

Michael Barresi

Michael Barresi joined Smith in 2005. He completed his doctoral degree in developmental biology at Wesleyan University in 2001, and gained further research training as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Barresi has established an NIH and NSF funded research program focused on understanding how the embryonic brain develops using the Zebrafish model system. Also part of the neuroscience program at Smith, Barresi mentors and trains more than 10 students each year in his laboratory. He teaches a variety of courses in the biological sciences, from the introductory Cells, Physiology and Development to upper level lecture and laboratory courses in the area of developmental biology and a seminar on stem cells. Barresi has pioneered the use of innovative technologies in these courses, such as Lecture Capture, Web conferencing, and the creation of documentary movies. He also spearheaded the creation of the Mid-Semester Assessment program, which has become an important resource for faculty development across divisions.

Floyd Cheung

Floyd Cheung joined the Department of English Language and Literature and the American Studies Program at Smith in 1999. Born in Hong Kong, Cheung grew up in Las Vegas and completed a master’s and doctoral degree at Tulane University. Among Cheung’s favorite courses to teach are Methods in Literary Study, Asian American Women Writers, Narratives of Internment, Reading Contemporary Poetry, and American Literature from 1865-1914. He is also a member of the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Studies Certificate Program, for which he served as founding chair. Interested in the recovery of early Asian American texts, Cheung has edited H. T. Tsiang’s novels And China Has Hands and The Hanging on Union Square, and co-edited Kathleen Tamagawa’s memoir Holy Prayers in a Horse’s Ear. His most recent publication, Naming Jhumpa Lahiri: Canons and Controversies, came out in February. Cheung has contributed his creative writings to such journals as The Apple Valley Review, qarrtsiluni, and Rhino. His poetry chapbook, Jazz at Manzanar, is forthcoming from Pudding House Press.

Jennifer Guglielmo

Jennifer Guglielmo joined the Department of History at Smith in 2003 after completing a doctorate in history at the University of Minnesota. She teaches courses in modern U.S. history, and specializes in the histories of labor, race, women, immigration, transnational cultures and activisms, and revolutionary social movements. She is the author of Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945, which received the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award for best book in U.S. immigration history, the Marraro Prize for best book in Italian Studies, and Honorable Mention from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for best first book. She also received the Organization of American Historians Lerner-Scott Prize in 2003 for the best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women’s history, and her work has been funded by the Social Science Research Council and the American Association of University Women.