Five Women Awarded Academic Honors

Rebecca Solnit, the Andrew D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University, was named the 2011 Robert Laxalt Distinguished Writer at the University of Nevada at Reno. She is the author of 13 books, including the award-winning A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (Viking, 2009), and a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine.

Professor Solnit is a graduate of San Francisco State University and holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley.

Marie Chisholm-Burns, a professor and chair of the department of pharmacy practice and science at the University of Arizona, received the Pharmacy Practice Research Award from the American Society of Health Science Pharmacists. Dr. Chisholm-Burns was recently appointed dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She will take office this January.

Professor Chisholm-Burns holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Georgia. She earned a master of public health degree at Emory University.

Marisel Moreno received the 2011 Governor’s Award for Service Learning at the Governor’s Conference on Service and Volunteerism in Indianapolis. She is an assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures at the University of Notre Dame. She was honored for her creation of a Spanish literature course that included a community-service requirement.

Dr. Moreno is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University.

Mimi Chakarova, a professor of photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, received the Daniel Pearl Award from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. She was honored for her study of the underground criminal networks that force Eastern European women into prostitution abroad.

Chakarova is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. She holds a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Louise O’Neal, former director of athletics, physical education, and recreation at Wellesley College, received the Lifetime Achievement and Legacy Award from the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators.

O’Neal  served as athletics director at Wellesley from 1990 to 2006. Previously she held positions at Yale University, Dartmouth College, and Southern Connecticut State University.