By Julie Koehler (CISAH)
On April 11th, 2025, undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, advisors, and academic staff all gathered in the Digital Scholarship Lab Flex Space at the Main Library to eat, chat, and to celebrate excellence in Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities courses in the last year. The IAH Student Awards, Somers Award for Excellence in Teaching (for graduate teaching), Fintz Award for Teaching Excellence in Teaching in the Arts and Humanities (for faculty teaching IAH courses) and the Service to IAH award were awarded by CISAH director Garth Sabo and they demonstrated the excellence of teaching and learning across all courses in the Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities.
This year, members of the 2024 IAH Student Award Committee were present to share awards for student projects in the categories of Writing and Creative Communications. The committee consisted of Denise Acevedo (WRAC), Alena Aniskiewicz (CISAH), Patti Spinner (LILAC), and Carol Wilson-Duffy (ELC). The six winning students came from a pool of more than 18,000 Michigan State students who took an IAH course in 2024. They were a great representation of the diversity of the IAH classroom coming from a variety of programs including: Social Work, Neuroscience, Theatre, Information Science, Music Education, and Anthropology. The winners of the Writing section produced exemplary writing and included: Kai Matsushita (honorable mention), Marin Scholes (second place), and Katherin Poon (first place). In addition, the committee awarded Creative Communication awards, which allowed for a broader representation of the work students do in IAH courses beyond traditional writing assignments, including writing and performing music. The winners were Ryan Wilbert (honorable mention), Mattie Pennington (second place), and Hank Leversedge. Notably, Leversedge gave permission for some of his lyrics to be shared at the ceremony which were particularly moving.
Following the student award, teaching awards were presented. First the IAH Faculty Advisory Committee was acknowledged which is made up of Laura Smith (AAHD), Steve Arch (ENG), Lina Qu (LILAC), Emily Katz (PHL), Mohammad Khalil (REL), Marco Diaz-Munoz (RCS), Getu Workenhe (THR), Ed Murphy (HST), Michael Largey (MUS), Andy McCullough (ELC), Paul Schauert (CISAH), Michael Lockett (CISAH). Also, before the presentation of each of the following awards, CISAH director Garth Sabo shared the winners from the previous two years. These awards have been awarded for several years, but due to the upheaval of Covid and the overturn of IAH administration, this was the first ceremony to present such awards in person in several years, so this acknowledgement gave recognition for those awardees of previous years.
The first set of awards were for graduate teaching, the Somers Awards. These graduate students also represented a variety of departments that contribute to IAH instruction, including History, English, Music, and Philosophy. There were nominated by their students and then those nominations were supported by the supervising faculty members. Citations from these letters of support were read aloud at the ceremony. The winners of the 2024 Somers Award for Excellence in Teaching were William Sclabassi (HST), Nya Nulty (MUS), David Marchionni (HST), Ayaat Ismail (ENG), Blake Ginsburg (PHL), Zachary Cho (HST), and Senora Blanco (ENG). Many of these graduate students and their supervising faculty members joined us and were able to receive their certificate in person.
The second set of teaching awards were the Fintz Awards for Teaching Excellence in the Arts and Humanities. This award is made possible by an endowment from Professor Ken Waltzer, former director of CISAH, in honor of his father. There were three winners of this award, each nominated by their students for excellence in the classroom. This year’s winners were Rick Blackwood of English for the course IAH 241G “Sex and Violence in Film, TV, and Digital Media,” Laura Ramm of the English Language Center for the course IAH 209 “Totally Awesome 80s,” and Liz Tuttle of Romance and Classical Studies for the course IAH 231B “France and the Holocaust.” Both the instructors and the courses represent the wonderful work being done in our IAH courses every term to challenge MSU students to think critically about the Arts and Humanities.
Finally, the last award of the day, but not the least was the Service to IAH award which was granted to Stephen Arch. Arch has been teaching in IAH for several decades, overseeing dozens of teaching assistants, and still striving for excellence every year. In the past ten years, he was been awarded the Fintz Award (2018) and served on the IAH Faculty Advisory Committee, and in the last year, he revamped a 400-student lecture course from Gothic literature to Environmental Humanities. Arch will be retiring in December 2026 and plans to pursue other adventures, including indulging in his love of birding!
Overall, the day was a wonderful opportunity to see all the good work being done in teaching and learning within IAH courses and the special community that we have built to honor all those participating in that work.