Five UNL faculty members have earned recognition from the College of Arts and Sciences for outstanding accomplishments in teaching and research.
Each year, the college recognizes extraordinary faculty achievements by awarding the Hazel R. McClymont Distinguished Teaching Award and Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Awards. The recipients will be formally recognized at the college’s annual Celebration of Excellence on April 10.
Shari Stenberg, associate professor of English, will receive the McClymont Award, which is chosen by members of the college executive committee. It honors exemplary teaching and carries a $6,000 stipend.
Stenberg has authored many chapters and articles, as well as two books, including a volume on teaching English to college students. She specializes in composition and rhetoric; critical and feminist pedagogies; feminist rhetoric; and teaching and writing development.
“I am incredibly impressed with the breadth of Dr. Stenberg’s teaching accomplishments,” Dean Joseph Francisco said. “She teaches writing to undergraduate and graduate students, trains graduate student instructors and undergraduate writing tutors, involves faculty in peer teaching circles and mentoring discussions, and is the Director of Composition and Rhetoric for the English Department.”
The ORCA recipients are Andrzej Rajca, Charles Bessey Professor of Chemistry; Ming Li, associate professor of psychology; Jordan Stump, Charles Bessey Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures; and Stephen Behrendt, George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English.
Rajca came to UNL in 1992 and oversees the Rajca Research Group, which focuses on high-spin organic radicals as building blocks for organic magnets and stable nitroxide radicals for biophysical and biomedical applications. Rajca has been credited with developing several breakthroughs including the first organic polymer with magnetic ordering.
Li joined the college faculty in 2005. Since that time, he has published more than 60 articles and a book chapter and has given several conference and invited presentations. He has also earned more than $4 million in grant funding to support the Neuroscience and Behavior Program, of which he serves as coordinator. Li’s research examines the psychological processes and neurobiological mechanisms of psychosis and the effects of antipsychotic drugs on the brain and psychological functions.
Stump joined UNL in 1992 and has completed 24 translations of book-length works, 12 journal articles, two books and many conference papers and presentations. He is a renowned scholar on the French writer Raymond Queneau and is recognized as the leading American authority on the author. His research interests include literary theory, the contemporary novel, the ontology of fiction, and literary translation.
Behrendt joined UNL’s Department of English in 1980. A prolific writer and researcher, Behrendt has been published in journal articles, book chapters, electronic editions and books. He published a volume of original poetry titled “Refractions.” His research has encompassed British Romanticism, later 18th-century British literature, women writers of the Romantic period, William Blake and the Shelley Circle.
