Notable Honors and Awards for Eight Women in Higher Education

Judy Genshaft, president of the University of South Florida System, has been selected to receive the Donna Shavlik Award from the American Council on Education. The award honors individuals who have made helping women in higher education a priority through leadership, career development, mentoring, and campus climate. President Genshaft will be honored at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education.

Dr. Genshaft was named president of the University of Florida System in 2000. She is a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Kent State University in Ohio.

Fenice Boyd, professor of learning and instruction in the Graduate School of Education of the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York System, received the Albert J. Kingston Award from the Literacy Research Association. She was recognized for outstanding contributions to the association and the academic community.

Dr. Boyd holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. She earned a Ph.D. in curriculum, teaching, and educational policy at Michigan State University.

Anna Deavere Smith, a professor of art and public policy at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, was chosen as the winner of the George Polk Career Award in Journalism. The award, named after a CBS correspondent who died covering the Greek Civil War in 1948, honors excellence in print and broadcast journalism. Smith, an actress, playwright, and performance artist, is the first winner of the Polk Award who is not a traditional journalist.

Smith is a graduate of what is now Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and earned a master of fine arts degree from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California.

Vivien Schmidt, the Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and professor of international relations and political science in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was honored for her work in mentoring women by the Society of Women in International Political Economy. She is the author or editor of several books including Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Professor Schmidt joined the faculty at Boston University in 2008. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

Donna Cox, the director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the University of Illinois, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from IMERSA (Immersive Media Entertainment, Research, Science & Arts).

Dr. Cox, who is a professor in the School of Art and Design at the university, holds bachelor’s and master of fine arts degrees from the University of Wisconsin. She earned a Ph.D. in computing and communications at the University of Plymouth in England.

Marilyn Horne, a mezzo-soprano who has had a career in opera spanning more than a half century, was recognized by the board of trustees of the University of Pittsburgh by the naming of a building on the university’s Bradford campus in her honor.

Marilyn Horne Hall houses the division of continuing education and regional development and the Center for Rural Health Practice. Horne is a native of Bradford.

Marisa Marques, professor of pathology at the University of Alabama Birmingham, has been chosen to receive the 2017 Presidential Award from the American Society for Apheresis. The process of apheresis involves using a centrifuge to separate various components of blood. Dr. Marques will be honored at the society’s annual meeting in Fort Lauderdale this coming May.

Dr. Marques is a past president of the American Society for Apheresis. She earned her medical degree at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

Sandra Sanguino, associate dean for student affairs at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Illinois, was selected to receive the Exceptional Mentor Award from the American Medical Women’s Association. She will be honored in San Francisco in April.

Dr. Sanguino is a graduate of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and holds a master of public health degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.