Six Women Faculty Members Selected for Notable Honors

Lyra Monteiro, an assistant professor of American history at the Newark campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey, received the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. She was honored for her article “Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.” The essay was published in The Public Historian.

Dr. Monteiro is a summa cum laude graduate of the New York University. She holds two master’s degrees from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in archaeology and the ancient world from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Terri J. Vrtiska, an assistant professor in the department of radiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, was selected as the recipient of the 2016 Honored Educator Award from the Radiological Society of North America. The society represents more than 54,000 radiologists, medical physicists, and other medical professionals in more than 100 counties around the world.

Dr. Vrtiska is a graduate of Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. She earned a medical doctorate at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lori Jakiela, professor of English and creative writing at the Greensburg campus of the University of Pittsburgh, has been selected to receive the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing from the Stanford University Libraries in the nonfiction category. She will be honored and receive a cash prize at a ceremony at Stanford this fall.

Professor Jakiela is being honored for her memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth (Atticus Books, 2015).

Maria F. Paredes Fernandez, a lecturer in Hispanic and Portuguese studies at the University of Pennsylvania, was named the 2016 Teacher of the Year at the University Level by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. She joined the faculty at the university in 2011.

In announcing the award, the association stated that Paredes Fernandez “has an exceptional ability to effectively communicate course material in an engaging way and a genuine interest in seeing students succeed.”

Kathryn Jablokow, associate professor of engineering design and mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University-Great Valley in Malvern, received the 2016 Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Design Educator Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. She is the second woman to earn the award.

Dr. Jablokow holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, all from Ohio State University.

Katie Whitlock was posthumously honored with the 2016 Oscar Brockett Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. She was a professor in the department of music and theatre at California State University, Chico. Professor Whitlock died in 2015.

Dr. Whitlock was a graduate of the University of Arizona. She earned a master of fine arts degree in theatre design at the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. in theatre history, literature, and criticism from Ohio State University.