2024 Presidential Awards for Outstanding Teaching, Faculty Service Awards, Campbell Scholars, and More

Columbia News produces a monthly newsletter (subscribe here!) and article series featuring a roundup of awards and milestones that Columbia faculty, staff, and students have received in recent days. In this edition, you’ll find awards and milestones from April 24 to May 22, 2024.

If you have an accomplishment you'd like to be considered for inclusion, please email [email protected] with your name, title, school, department, and a link to the relevant award or milestone. 

You can take a look at past accomplishments on our Awards & Milestones page. And you can subscribe to receive the newsletter in your inbox. 

FACULTY

Five faculty members were named recipients of the 2024 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching: Katherine Fox-Glassman, lecturer in the discipline of Psychology, Jeff Goldsmith, associate professor of Biostatistics, Todd Jick, senior lecturer in the discipline of Business, Management Division, David D. Yao, Piyasombatkul Family Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and Agnieszka Legutko, senior lecturer in Yiddish. 

Four faculty members were named recipients of the 2024 Faculty Service Award by the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement: Gita V. Johar, Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business, Elisa Konofagou, Robert and Margaret Hariri Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Yamile M. Martí Haidar, associate professor of professional practice, and Kendall Thomas, Nash Professor of Law. The award recognizes full-time faculty whose extraordinary and creative voluntary service has contributed significantly to the University’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Two faculty members were named recipients of the 2024 Faculty Mentoring Award: Henry P. Monaghan, professor of Law, and Rhiannon Stephens, professor of History. The award recognizes senior faculty who have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to faculty mentoring through their work with tenure-track and mid-career faculty in developing their careers.

You can also learn more about award and grant recipients from the Office of the Provost’s award programs, including inaugural Dialogue Across Difference grant recipients.

ARTS & HUMANITIES

Brent Hayes Edwards, Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature, won the Book of the Year About Jazz: Biography or Autobiography award for Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music, which he co-wrote with Henry Threadgill; and Farah Jasmine Griffin, William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies, won the Book of the Year About Jazz: History, Criticism, and Culture award for In Search of a Beautiful Freedom. Both awards were from the Jazz Journalists Association.

Eleanor Johnson, associate professor of English and Comparative Literature, is the recipient of the Lionel Trilling Book Award for her book, Waste in the Waters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England (2023). The award is given to a member of Columbia’s faculty whose book was published in the previous year and upholds a level of excellence commensurate with the work of Lionel Trilling (CC’25, GSAS’38) a gifted and dedicated teacher who was deeply committed to undergraduate education.

Sharon Marcus, Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature, is this year’s recipient of the Mark Van Doren Teaching Award. The award was established in honor of Mark Van Doren (GSAS’21) a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, novelist, playwright, critic, editor, and biographer, as well as a renowned scholar and legendary teacher, who inspired generations of Columbia students.

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Sachin Agarwal, associate professor of Neurology, was awarded $10,826,248 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for the project "Patterns of survivors' recovery trajectories in the ICECAP trial (POST-ICECAP)."

Emanuele Barca, assistant professor of Neurology, was awarded the American Academy Neurology Clinical Research Award.

Andrea Califano, Clyde '56 and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical Biology, and Barry Honig, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Systems Biology, were awarded $7,236,356 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "Center for Cancer Systems Therapeutics (CaST)."

Ruth Masterson Creber, Mary Crawford Professor of Nursing, received the Distinguished Contributions to Nursing Research Award from the Eastern Nursing Research Society.

Riccardo Dalla-Favera, Percy and Joanne Uris Professor of Clinical Medicine, was awarded $6,909,000 over seven years from the National Cancer Institute for "From pathogenesis to new therapeutic targets in Diffuse Large B cell Lymphoma."

Maureen George, professor of Nursing, was selected for induction into the Sigma Nursing Hall of Fame by Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.

Jerard Z. Kneifati-Hayek, assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, was named among the 40 Under 40 Outstanding Health Professionals, Physicians, Educators, Dentists, and Researchers by the National Hispanic Medical Association and National Hispanic Health Foundation.

Jon A. Levenson, associate professor of Psychiatry, received an Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award from the New York County Psychiatric Society Residents' Committee. He also was inducted as a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. 

Jeffrey W. Moses, John and Myrna Daniels Professor of Cardiology, will receive the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Geoffrey O. Hartzler Master Operator Award honoring his skills and leadership in interventional cardiovascular medicine.

Nour Makarem, assistant professor of Epidemiology, was elected a fellow of the American Heart Association conferred by the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention.

Lorraine Symington, Harold S. Ginsberg Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis, was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences.

Timothy Cragin Wang, Dorothy L. and Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Medicine, was awarded $6,909,000 over seven years from the National Cancer Institute for "The role of stem cells and the microenvironment in gastrointestinal cancers."

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Nineteen members of the Columbia Journalism School community have been named finalists and winners of the Pulitzer Prizes, which are conferred by Columbia University on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Board,  including Justin Elliott, adjunct professor, as part of ProPublica, and Haley Willis, adjunct assistant professor of Journalism, as part of the staff of The New York Times. You can find the full list of Journalism School-affiliated winners here and the full list of Pulitzer Prize winners here. 

POSTDOCS & STUDENTS

Three graduate student instructors were named recipients of the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching: Souray Chatterjee, teaching assistant and doctoral candidate in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies, Manasi Jayakumar, teaching scholar and doctoral candidate in the department of Psychology, and Daniel Santiago Sáenz, literature humanities preceptor and former teaching fellow in the department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. 

Eighteen students were named 2024 Campbell Award winners: Kaitlin Long (BC’24), Minhas Wasaya (BUS’24), Farida Razaqi (CS’24), Abbey Hsu (CC’24), Erika Denour (DEN’24), Ebonnie Goodfield (GS’24), Eleanor Phetteplace (GSAPP’24), Kailani Acosta (GSAS’24), Wellington Soares (JRN’24), Luke Cronin (LAW’24), Ian West (NUR’24), Tyler Nichols (MPH’24), Matthew Werneken (SEAS’24), Deris Nagara (SIPA’24), Summer Brown (SPS’24), Rosie Savage (SSW’24), Cameron J. Arnzen (TC’24), and Amir Hassan (VPS’24). 

Nadia Malaika Kabba (Medical Humanities, CC'24) and Victor Swezey (Comparative Literature and Society, CC'24) are both winners of the Catherine Medalia Johannet Senior Thesis Award, given annually to one or two Comparative Literature & Society or Medical Humanities majors, whose distinguished senior theses demonstrate the highest academic rigor, creativity, and engagement with ethical questions. The prizes were created by family and friends in memory of Catherine Medalia Johannet, a Medicine, Literature, and Society major, CC’15, consistent with Catherine’s interest in literature and its use in effecting change in society. 

Zoe Neuschatz (GS’25) is the winner of the Peter Awn Undergraduate Paper Prize. Her submission was "Eating is Believing: Religious Expression in Countercultural Cookbooks, 1975-1999." The annual Peter Awn Undergraduate Paper Prize was established by the Department of Religion in 2019, to honor the memory of Peter Awn and his commitment to undergraduate education.

Sara Wahedi (GS’24) is the recipient of the Clarendon Fund Scholarship to study for the full-time Master in Public Policy at the University of Oxford.