Honors for Eight Academic Women

Sharon Oster, the Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and director of the Program on Social Enterprise at the Yale University School of Management, won the 2011 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession of the American Economics Association. The award will be presented in Chicago in January.

Professor Oster joined the faculty at the SOM in 1982 and was the first woman to gain tenure at the school. She served as dean from 2008 to earlier this year.

Ohio State University has renamed its breast cancer research center in honor of Stephanie Spielman. An 1989 graduate of Ohio State, Spielman died in 2009 at the age of 42 after a 12-year battle with breast cancer. Her husband Chris Spielman was an All-American linebacker at Ohio State and played for 10 years with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. Over the years, the Spielmans raised more than $9 million for breast cancer research at Ohio State. The research and treatment facility at Ohio State was renamed the Stephanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center.

Robin C. Newton, associate senior vice president for clinical affairs and quality at Howard University Health Sciences, was named as the recipient of Parker J. Palmer Courage to Lead Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The award will be presented in Orlando, Florida, in March.

Dr. Newton completed her medical training at the Howard University College of Medicine.

Chilean author Isabel Allende was chosen to receive the Lawrence Sanders Award from the creative writing program at Florida International University. Among her novels are Island Beneath the Sea and The House of Spirits. She will receive the award on the FIU campus in March.

The award is given to “a writer of fiction whose work reflects both the highest literary merit and popular appeal.”

Jessica Schiffman, assistant professor and associate chair of the women’s studies department at the University of Delaware, received the Vision of Peace Award from the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She was honored for “leadership contributions and sustained commitment to ending violence against women.”

Schiffman has taught at the University of Delaware for 25 years. She is the co-editor of the textbook, Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York University Press).

Demetria Martinez, a poet, journalist, and novelist, who teaches at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, received the 2011 Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Martinez is best known for her book Mother Tongue.

M. Shawn Copeland, associate professor of systematic theology at Boston College, was awarded the St. Elizabeth Seton Medal from the College of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. The award, established in 1966, is given to honor distinguished women in theology.

Dr. Copeland, who received a doctorate from the Andover Newton Theological School at Boston College is the author of Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being and The Subversive Power of Love: The Vision of Henriette Delille. Professor Copeland is the first African American to serve as president of the Catholic Theological Symposium.

Joni Young, professor of accounting at the Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico received the Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association. She was recognized for an article entitled “Making Up Users.”