Eight Women Scholars Honored With Prestigious Awards

Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Rabbi Donal A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, received the Raphael Lemkin Prize from the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. Professor Lipstadt was honored for her work in the cause of genocide prevention.

Professor Lipstadt is a graduate of the City College of New York. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University. Among her books are The Eichmann Trial, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, and Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

Beth Fitts, an instructor at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi and director of the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, has been selected to receive the James Frederick Paschal Award from the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association.

Fitts taught journalism in the public schools for 27 years before joining the faculty at Ole Miss in 2005.

Julie A. Luft, the Athletic Association Professor of Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Georgia, will receive the 2012 Journal of Research in Science Teaching Award from the National Association of Research in Science Teaching. She will be honored as the lead author of the paper judged to be the most significant article published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching during 2011. The article was titled, “Beginning Secondary Science Teacher Induction: A Two-Year Mixed Methods Study.”

Dr. Luft who joined the University of Georgia faculty in January, previously taught at Arizona State University. She holds a doctorate in science education from the University of Iowa.

Frances Malino, the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, has been named a knight of the Ordre des Palmes Academiques. The Order of Academic Palms was founded by Napoleon. Membership is awarded to scholars whose work promotes the French language or culture.

Professor Malino is a graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

Christine Moffitt, professor of fisheries at the University of Idaho, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Idaho chapter of the American Fisheries Society. The award honors individuals who have made significant contributions to conservation of fishery resources and aquatic ecosystems.

Professor Moffitt is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz. She holds a master’s degree from Smith College and a Ph.D. in fish biology from the University of Massachusetts.

Stephanie Turner Chen, a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at San Francisco, received the Larry Sandler Memorial Award from the Genetics Society of America. Dr. Chen was honored for the best doctoral dissertation in Drosophila genetics.

Dr. Chen earned her Ph.D. at the University of California at Riverside.

The inaugural winner of the Meda Chesney-Lind Award presented by the Western Society of Criminology is Meda Chesney-Lind, a professor of women’s studies at the University of Hawaii. The award honors scholarly achievement on the subject of gender and crime.

Professor Chesney-Lind is the author or co-author of eight books including Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Violence and Hype, Girls, Delinquency, and Juvenile Justice, and The Female Offender: Girls, Women, and Crime. A graduate of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, she holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii.

Ruth H. Alexander, distinguished professor of physical education emerita at the University of Florida, was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1972, Alexander was the founder of the women’s athletic program at the University of Florida.

A graduate of Milligan College in Tennessee, Alexander is the author of eight books. She taught at the University of Florida for 36 before her retirement in 2003.