Six Women Honored for Their Accomplishments

Lisa A. Pruitt, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, was named as the recipient of the 2011 A. Richard Newton Educator Award from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. The award will be presented at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Portland on November 11.

Dr. Pruitt is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in engineering from Brown University.

Tanja McKay, an associate professor of entomology at Arkansas State University, received the Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching from the Entomological Society of America. She has been on the faculty at Arkansas State since 2004.

Dr. McKay is a graduate of Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Manitoba and a Ph.D. in entomology from Kansas State University.

Chris Voelz, the former women’s athletic director at the University of Minnesota, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators.

Voelz was the women’s athletic director at the University of Minnesota from 1988 to 2002. She began her career as the women’s volleyball coach at the University of Oregon and served as president of the American Volleyball Coaches Association.

Martha Andresen, professor emerita of English at Pomona College, received the Crystal Quill Award from the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles. The award is presented to “scholars, patrons, and artists whose work and philanthropy advances appreciation of the immediacy of Shakespeare’s plays.”

Professor Andresen retired from teaching in 2006 and is now completing work on a book entitled, Caught in the Act: A Passion for Shakespeare.

Melissa Weintraub, the founding director of Encounter, an edu­ca­tional orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing Jew­ish dias­pora lead­ers from across the reli­gious and polit­i­cal spec­trum with expo­sure to Pales­tin­ian life, was awarded the Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize from Grinnell College in Iowa.

Weintraub is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University. She was ordained as a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Katharine Shester, assistant professor of economics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, has been awarded the 2011 Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation on economic history from the Economic History Association.  Her dissertation, completed at Vanderbilt University, was entitled, “American Public Housing’s Origins and Effects.”