Connecticut College’s most prestigious awards were presented at a May 10 ceremony honoring faculty who have demonstrated excellence in research, teaching and leadership.
The 2022 winners are:
David Dorfman, dance teacher
FACULTY NANCY BATSON NISBET RASH AWARD FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE
David Dorfman is the recipient of the 2022 Nancy Batson Nisbet Rash Faculty Research Prize, awarded annually to a faculty member selected on the basis of outstanding scholarly or artistic achievement. The award was established in 1995 in memory of Nancy Rash, Lucy C. McDannel ’22 Professor of Art History at Connecticut College from 1972 to 1995.
Dorfman, an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer who received his MFA from Connecticut College in 1981, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to pursue his research and choreography on themes of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissent and underground movements.
Dorfman, who directs the influential David Dorfman dance company, has received four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, an American Choreographer’s Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard and a 1996 New York Dance & Performance Award (“Bessie”).
He choreographed the Broadway play Indecent, winning a Lortel award for “outstanding choreography”. His choreography has also been produced at venues ranging from BAM Next Wave Festival to The Kitchen, The Joyce Theatre, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project/St. Mark’s Church, PS 122 and Dancing in the Streets. His work has been the subject of numerous commissions in the United States and Europe. His work has been widely commissioned in the United States and Europe, including by Bedlam Dance Company (London), d9 Dance Collective (Seattle) and the Prince Music Theater of Philadelphia for the award-winning musical Green Violin. Barrymore in 2003. for best choreography.
His most recent work is (A) Get out of my body.
Jillian Marshall, Lecturer in Psychology
JOHN S. KING FACULTY AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING
Jillian Marshall is the recipient of the 2022 John S. King Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. The award was created to recognize teacher-researchers with high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students. It is named after the beloved German teacher whose warmth and humanity touched all who knew him.
Marshall teaches “PSY 100: Introduction to Psychology” and “PSY 100 Labs”. She also advises and assists students in conducting independent studies and honors theses. She has developed and implemented new programs for lectures and practical work, most recently designing a 5-week online intensive PSY 100 course for the summer session. His areas of interest include general psychology and experimental psychology. She is interested in the impact of stress and anxiety on memory formation, as well as sport psychology and elite performance in conjunction with identity development and well-being. be.
In a nomination letter, one student wrote, “If I had to choose one word to describe Professor Marshall, it would be passion. She is passionate about her students and her job as a teacher. Professor Marshall pours energy and love into all her interactions with the students and makes them feel loved, respected and welcomed in the classroom. She is committed to the student experience, often coming out to support students at games, concerts, and other events. Her genuine interest in the lives of her students sets her apart from the average college professor.
Marshall is an academic advisor for the major and minor in psychology and the major in neuroscience. She is also a co-advisor of the chapter of The College of Psi Chi: The International Honor Society in Psychology.
She is the Chair of the New Faculty Steering Committee, a faculty member of the Endeavor Faculty Development FYS Counseling Seminar, and a member of the College’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. She is Green Dot trained through the Office of Sexual Violence and Prevention Advocacy and trained in Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention through Student Counseling Services. Marshall and his PSY 100 students also support the local community each semester by participating in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s Disease in the fall and the Walk for Multiple Sclerosis in the spring.
Christopher Hammond, math teacher
FACULTY HELEN BROOKS REGAN AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN LEADERSHIP
Christopher Hammond is the recipient of the 2022 Helen Brooks Regan Faculty Leadership Award, given annually to a tenured faculty member whose outstanding service in a leadership role exemplifies the College’s commitment to shared governance, democratic process and campus community development.
At Connecticut College, much of Hammond’s research falls into an area of analysis known as functional operator theory. Essentially, this subject seeks to relate problems of current interest in operator theory to questions in the more “classical” context of complex analysis. (This type of intersection is a common theme across mathematics and greatly enriches the aesthetic dimension of the discipline.) Hammond’s own work relates to a particular class of vector spaces whose elements are analytic functions, and some linear transformations on these spaces. In recent years, Hammond has also been interested in expanding the scope of certain serial convergence tests, in particular Raabe’s test and Jamet’s test.
In support of the Hammond Award, one nominator wrote that “Professor Hammond is involved in so many integral ways related to the curriculum that I am never sure in what role he acts. In fact, I’ve come to suspect that his service and leadership isn’t a particular job at all; I believe he gives so much to the College and his colleagues simply because he is a good person.
While pure math takes up much of Hammond’s attention, he is thrilled whenever he can find connections between math and the arts. He has given several lectures on Dante’s use of mathematical imagery in the divine comedyas well as a conference on the place of science and mathematics in Gulliver’s Travels.
Hammond’s publications include the papers “Composition-differentiation operators on the Hardy space” and “Normality and self-adjointness of weighted composition-differentiation operators”. He has lectured extensively on his research, most recently at the Northeast Analysis Meeting (NEAM) in Syracuse, New York.
He taught a variety of courses at Connecticut College and volunteered to teach math at Niantic’s York Correctional Institute, Connecticut’s only women’s correctional facility.
Carla Parker-Athill, assistant professor of biology
HELEN MULVEY FACULTY AWARD FOR STUDENT SUCCESS
Carla Parker-Athill is the 2022 recipient of the Helen Mulvey Faculty Award, given to an assistant professor who consistently delivers courses that inspire students to work harder than they thought they would and achieve unforeseen levels of academic achievement.
Parker-Athill is interested in understanding the developmental impact of the early childhood environment on behavioral, neurological, and immunological outcomes. His current work in the neurobiology of stress focuses on the impact of early experiences of stress and/or trauma on learning and behavior. His research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of stress and how hormones produced during stress, such as cortisol, regulate lineage specification in neural stem cells. formation of synapses; and behavior and learning.
Parker-Athill has run labs and mentored student researchers in projects aimed at understanding how the environment influences behavior at the molecular level, and has lectured ranging from non-major biology, cell biology and genetics, animal physiology and advanced seminars in biology. of behavior.
In support of the nomination, a colleague wrote that Parker-Athill’s “assignments offer students a way to engage where they are at, but push them to reconsider their perspectives and the intersections of society more deeply. and scientific problems, which is incredibly powerful for the possibility of further growth and engagement. She also shared the approaches she used in the lab section to inspire students to think creatively in the design of their projects and experiences.
Parker-Athill’s other work includes understanding the role of the immune system in neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Her postgraduate work examined the developmental impact of prenatal infection on behavioral, neurological, and immunological outcomes as a model of autism spectrum disorders, while her postdoctoral work focused on understanding the role of immune activation and the evolution of OCD pathology and symptoms.
She is a fellow of the Society for Neuroscience and an active member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science.
