Awards for Five University Women

Stacia Gordon, an assistant professor of geological sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno, has been selected to receive the 2014 Young Scientist Award for the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division of the European Geosciences Union. She will be presented with the award in April in Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Gordon has been on the faculty at the University of Nevada since 2010. She is a graduate of Ohio University in Athens and holds a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Minnesota.

Jo Young Switzer, the first woman to serve as president of Manchester University in Indiana, received the 2013 Chief Executive Leadership Award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Dr. Switzer has been president of Manchester University since 2004 after previously serving as dean of academic affairs at the institution for 11 years.

Dr. Switzer is a graduate of Manchester University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Kansas.

Augusta Vono, an instructor in Portuguese and director of the Strategic Language Institute at Florida International University in Miami, received the Order of Rio Branco from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The award is given to Brazilians and foreign nationals for service in diplomacy, government service, and civil fields.

Vono, a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil was honored for “promoting academic exchange between Brazil and the United States, as well as dissemination and valorization of the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture.”

Tisa Mason, vice president for student affairs at Fort Hays State University in Kansas, received the Robert A. Shaffer Award from the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors at the group’s annual meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Before coming to Fort Hays State University, Dr. Mason was dean of student life at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

Susan McLean, professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, has been chosen to receive the 2014 Donald Justice Poetry Prize from the Poetry Center at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. The award is given to the author of an unpublished book-length manuscript of formal poetry.

Professor McLean’s winning entry, The Whetstone Misses the Knife, will be published by Story Line Press in June 2014. Dr. McLean holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in New Jersey.