Five University Professors Receive National Honors

Emily Auerbach, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, received the Commission on Access, Diversity, and Excellence Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. She is being honored for co-founding the Odyssey Project at the university. The project offers a tuition-free humanities class for 30 adult students facing economic barriers to college.

Professor Auerbach is the author of Searching for Jane Austen (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

Mary Louise Hemmeter, a professor of special education in the Peabody College of education and human development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, received the Mary McEvoy Service to the Field Award from the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children. The award is given to an individual who has made significant national or international contributions to the field of early childhood special education.

Dr. Hemmeter joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2005 after teaching at the University of Kentucky and the University of Illinois. She is a graduate of Auburn University in Alabama and holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in education and human development from Vanderbilt University. She is the co-author of Essential Elements for Assessing Infants and Preschoolers With Special Needs (Pearson, 2013).

Susan R. Wessler, a Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside, was awarded the Barbara McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies by the Maize Genetics Executive Committee. Dr. Wessler has been on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside since 2010. Earlier, she served on the faculty at the University of Georgia for more than a quarter of a century.

Professor Wessler is a graduate of Stony Brook University of the State University of New York System. She holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Tonda Hughes, a professor of health systems science and associate dean for global health in the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been selected to receive the Betty Ford Award from the Association of Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. The award honors research in alcohol and drug abuse, particularly as these issues impact women.

Professor Hughes is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. in nursing sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Melody Graulich, professor of English and American studies at Utah State University, is the recipient of the Mary C. Turpie Prize from the American Studies Association. She has been on the faculty at Utah State since 1997. Her most recent book is Dirty Words in Deadwood: Literature and the Postwestern (University of Nebraska Press, 2013).

Professor Graulich is a graduate of Stanford University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia.