Excellence in Mentoring Awards

To promote and recognize outstanding achievements by faculty and staff in cultivating the professional potential of their colleagues and students, the Gender Institute makes annual Excellence in Mentoring Awards.

This academic year, we are pleased to once again offer the Excellence in Mentoring Award. The deadline to submit nominations to the Gender Institute is March 23, 2022. 

Nominations should include letters from faculty, graduate students, or undergraduate students detailing how the nominee has mentored them and supported their academic and professional development. Please send nominations to ub-irewg@buffalo.edu. 

Michael Rembis is an expert on disability history, including the history of madness.

He is director of the Center for Disability Studies at UB and has worked with colleagues around the world to expand and solidify the fields of disability history and disability studies.

He has authored or edited numerous books, book chapters or articles in the field, with these works exploring critical areas within disability history, including family, community and daily life; cultural histories; the relationship between disabled people and medicine; issues of citizenship, belonging and normalcy; and disability history from a global perspective.

Rembis’ research interests include the history of institutionalization, mad people's history, and the history of eugenics. He has also studied and written about contemporary issues concerning mental health and mental illness and mass incarceration.
 

Specializing in feminist political theory, modernism, continental philosophy, ethics, and critical theory, Ewa Ziarek has been an outstanding mentor to colleagues and students alike. Her colleague Kalliopi Nikolopoulou attests that, "Ewa's sense of instruction and mentorship does not stop at the seminar room or her office space. She uses the classroom as an exercise in professionalization....she is engaged in a continued conversation with her advisees, offering to them all the professional resources they need to succeed in an extremely competitive marketplace." 

Many graduate students also expressed high praise for Ewa. Seth Arico writes, "Professor Ziarek is one of the best instructors and advisors I have experienced throughout an undergraduate and graduate career that spans nearly a decade and three major research universities." Cheryl Emerson adds, "Ewa is the first professor to whom I turn in times of controversy or crisis. Her professionalism, direction, and ability to listen impartially has earned my trust and respect. From my interactions with classmates, I see that I am not alone in this opinion." 

Ewa's colleague Bill Solomon seems to sum up the feelings of many, stating simply, "it has been an honor to work alongside Ewa."