Three Recognized With 2021 University Teaching Awards
Three Penn Arts & Sciences faculty members have received University-wide teaching awards.
Melissa E. Sanchez, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, was recognized with a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching honor given by the University. Sanchez’s research and teaching focus on feminism, queer theory, and 16th- and 17th-century literature, including the works of William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser. Her most recent books are Queer Faith: Reading Promiscuity and Race in the Secular Love Tradition and Shakespeare and Queer Theory. She is a member of the Graduate Group in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory and Core Faculty in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. In 2009 she received the Penn Arts & Sciences Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor.
Chenoa Flippen, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Randall Kamien, Vicki and William Abrams Professor in the Natural Sciences and Professor of Physics and Astronomy, received Provost’s Awards for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring.
Flippen’s research addresses the connection between racial and ethnic inequality and contextual forces at the neighborhood, metropolitan, and national levels. Much of her work focuses on racial and ethnic inequality in the U.S.; life-course and aging, particularly as it relates to minority well-being; and Hispanic immigrant adaptation, especially in new areas of destination across the American South. Her current project seeks to understand the financial position of migrant Hispanics and the process and antecedents of wealth accumulation for this group. Flippen is a research associate at the Population Studies Center.
Kamien’s research centers on problems in soft condensed matter theory, including crystal structure. He holds a secondary appointment in mathematics. He is lead editor for the journal Reviews of Modern Physics and has more than 120 publications to his credit. Kamien has been a Simons Investigator and his honors include the G.W. Gray Medal and the Samsung Mid-Career Award. He has received fellowships from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania were established in 1961 with the help of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation. The Provost’s Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring has been awarded to two members of Penn’s standing or associated faculty in any school offering the Ph.D. since 2004.
To learn more about the winners of the University teaching awards, click here.
