Honors for Five Women Scholars

Elsa M. Nunez, president of Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New England Board of Higher Education. President Nunez was honored for her efforts to boost faculty diversity and student retention and graduation rates. She has served as president of ECSU for seven years.

Dr. Nunez is a graduate of Montclair State University in New Jersey. She holds a master’s degree in English from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from Rutgers University.

Eileen Sullivan-Marx, the Erline Perkins McGriff Professor and dean of the College of Nursing at New York University, received the 2013 Doris Schwartz Gerontological Nursing Research Award from the Gerontological Society of America.

Dr. Sullivan-Marx holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania. She also earned a master’s degree at the University of Rochester School of Nursing.

Marcella Kelly, associate professor of wildlife at Virginia Tech, received the Global Conservation Leadership Award from the Philadelphia Zoo. The award will provide an annual stipend of $25,000 in funding to support Dr. Kelly’s work in support of conservation efforts involving large cats.

Dr. Kelly has been on the Virginia Tech faculty since 2001. She holds a bachelor’s degree in wildlife and fisheries biology and a Ph.D., in ecology from the University of California, Davis.

Tatiana Homonoff, an assistant professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, received the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Government Finance and Taxation Award from the National Tax Association. Her dissertation was entitled “Behavioral Economics and Public Policy.”

Dr. Homonoff is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she double majored in mathematics and economics. She earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Lisa A. Tedesco, dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies and professor of behavioral sciences and health education at Emory University in Atlanta, received the 2014 Gies Award for Outstanding Achievement from the American Dental Association.

Professor Tedesco joined the Emory University faculty in 2006. Previously, she was a professor and associate dean in the School of Dentistry at the University of Michigan. Dr. Tedesco holds a doctorate in educational psychology from the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York system.