Six Women Scholars Who Have Been Honored With Major Awards

Ruchi Amin, chief resident for the surgical residency program at the Vidant Medical Center at East Carolina University, was recently awarded the 2019 Jameson L. Chassin Award for Professionalism in General Surgery from the American College of Surgeons Foundation. The award is given annually to a chief resident in general surgery who “embodies the values of compassion, technical skill, and devotion to science and learning.”

Dr. Amin is a graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, where she majored in chemical biology. She earned a medical degree at Rutgers University.

Karen Giuliano, an associate professor with the College of Nursing and the Institute for Applied Life Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, has been selected to receive the 2020 Distinguished Research Lecturer Award from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

Dr. Giuliano holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in nursing from Boston College. She earned a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Rhode Island and an MBA from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Maria Narayani Lasala-Blanco, an assistant professor in Arizona State University’s School of Politics and Global Studies, received the 2019 Adaljiza Sosa-Riddell Mentor Award from the American Political Science Association. The award is named in honor of the first Latina to earn a Ph.D. in political science and the recipient is recognized for their exceptional mentoring of Latina/o students and junior faculty.

Dr. Lasala-Blanco joined the faculty at Arizona State in 2018. She is a graduate of El Colegio de Mexico and holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock, a professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, has been named the recipient of the 2019 Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education from the National Communication Association. The award honors an NCA member who exemplifies excellence in teaching and professional achievement as evidenced by research and creative scholarship or service to the campus and community.

Dr. Scott-Pollock joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2010 and was promoted to full professor this year. She is a graduate of Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Maine.

Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. The award is given annually to recognize “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.” Established in 1994, the award comes with a $100,000 prize.

Professor Dove, who served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987. She is a summa cum laude graduate of the Miami University and holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Iowa.

Meredith Neville-Shepard, clinical assistant professor in the department of communication at the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, has received the Daniel Rohrer Memorial Outstanding Research Award from the American Forensic Association. The award recognizes one monograph for its outstanding contribution to the field of argumentation. Her award-winning essay – “Disciplining the Female Student Body: Consequential Transference in Arguments for School Dress Codes” – was published as the lead article in a 2019 issue of Women’s Studies in Communication.

Dr. Neville-Shepard is a graduate of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Kansas.