Achievements | Honors, appointments and publications for June 7

Recent achievements for the campus community were earned by Stephanie Bondi, Tony Bushard, Katie Colburn, Peter Dowben, Ken Kiewra, JD McCown, Stefanie Pearlman, Ryan Sullivan, Pat Tetreault, Barkley Speech Language and Hearing Clinic and the Soil Judging Team.

Honors

• Stephanie Bondi, associate professor of practice in educational administration, received the Distinguished Achievement in the Profession Award from the Consortium for Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals. The award honors individuals whose work has attained preeminence in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender services and programs in higher education.
• Katie Colburn, a psychology major from Grand Island, Nebraska, is the inaugural recipient of the Fredrickson-Formanek Scholarship, established in 2023 to recognized LGBTQA+ champions and supporters in Nebraska.
• JD McCown, assistant director at the Gender and Sexuality Center, was a finalist for the Promising New Professionals Award from the Consortium for Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals. This award recognizes a professional with less than five years of experience and the unique role new professionals play in supporting students and innovating campus programs while elevating the work of a campus LGBTQ Center. The award recognizes a new professional who is doing outstanding service, demonstrates innovative or creative effort within the profession, and shows significant promise for leadership on the field.
• Stefanie Pearlman, professor of law, and her co-author Melissa Serfass of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock received the Dr. Joel Fishman Professional Publication Award for their publication, “Animal Welfare Laws: A Legal Research Guide.” The award selection committee for the Government Law Libraries Special Interest Section recognized the publication as a practical and valuable resource for an area of law that is not widely addressed. The legal research guide focuses on the growing body of animal welfare laws in the United States.
• Pat Tetreault, director of the Gender and Sexuality Center received the Dr. Sheltreese D. McCoy Award for Outstanding Social Justice Practice from the Consortium for Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals. The award is named in honor of the work and legacy of Dr. Sheltresse D. McCoy, and recognizes significant commitments to social justice in both the field of Student Affairs as an academic discipline and through advanced practice in a professional capacity.
• The Barkley Speech Language and Hearing Clinic earned 2024 Journal Star Lincoln’s Choice awards presented by Union Bank & Trust. The clinic was the winner in the speech therapy category, and runner-up in the audiology/hearing centers category.
• The Husker Soil Judging Team took home six awards this year from the National Soil Judging Contest hosted by Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. UNL won second place overall team, first place in team judging, first place alternate team, third place individual, Mason Rutgers; first place alternate individual, Adrian Cox; and second place alternate individual, Rachel Clarkson. UNL Soil Judging has qualified for nationals every year since 2016 and received awards or recognition in 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Read more about the team.

Appointments

• Tony Bushard, professor of music history and former associate director for faculty affairs in the Glenn Korff School of Music, has been named associate dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, effective July 1, 2024. Bushard previously served as the interim associate dean this past spring. His duties will focus on curriculum, promotion/tenure process facilitation, faculty research, Hixson-Lied faculty grant administration, college governance and administrative processes.
• Peter Dowben, Charles Bessey Professor in physics, is the new editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, and will lead an international editorial board who oversee the journal’s 10 sections.
• Ryan Sullivan, Robert J. Kutak Distinguished Professor of Law, was named the first faculty fellow in the Center on Children, Families and the Law. The center’s faculty fellowship program launched this spring to facilitate creative activity and collaboration between center projects and campus faculty. Over the next 15 months, Sullivan will work closely with the center’s Community Services Division to help develop and advance research evidence that informs practice to prevent and end homelessness.

Publications

• Ken Kiewra, John E. Weaver Professor of Educational Psychology, recently published Be a More Productive Scholar with Cambridge University Press. The book details productivity stories and methods based on interviews he conducted with dozens of productive scholars over the past 25 years. It highlights what allows some scholars to publish hundreds of powerful works over their careers.