Excellence in Mentoring Awards
Based on nomination letters from faculty, staff, and students, the Excellence in Mentoring Award promotes and recognizes outstanding achievements by faculty and staff in cultivating theprofessional potential of their colleagues and students.
Excellence in Mentoring Award Nominations
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 April 8, 2024.
Faculty, staff, graduate students, or undergraduate students interested in nominating a mentor should send a letter to ub-irewg@buffalo.edu detailing how the nominee has mentored them and supported their academic and professional development.
2023 Awardee for Excellence in Mentoring
Megan Iantosca, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy
Megan Iantosca teaches in the Higher Education program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. Her research takes a sociological perspective to examine racial, gender and class inequities in both high schools and colleges and how students navigate the transition to postsecondary education. Her most recent work takes a critical eye towards understanding processes of classification in higher education, with the goal of better understanding student ethnoracial and gender identity and how educational researchers can develop better measures to describe these fluid, complex and contested identities. She has published a book with Rutgers University Press and numerous articles in journals such as Sociology of Education, The Journal of Higher Education, Teacher’s College Record and Gender and Education.
Megan values getting her students involved in research in numerous ways, including in the classroom through coursework and by having them get involved in her own research projects. She is currently working on numerous research projects and involving students as researchers and co-authors. She is particularly interested in assisting students navigate the dissertation process. She co-organized and hosted the GSE Dissertation Writing Camp and hosts biweekly writing accountability groups with her doctoral students.
Megan was nominated by PhD candidate Danielle Lewis. Danielle states, "Not only is Dr. Iantosca an excellent mentor to her students but her research truly has an impact on practice and policy that informs access of low-income and students of Color to higher education. She seeks to amplify voices of those who have been historically marginalized and shed light on barriers to the pursuit of social mobility. Dr. Iantosca is resourceful, collaborative, and innovative in her advocacy through research in this space, as evidenced by one of her more recent projects with a college preparatory pipeline program."
2021 Awardee for Excellence in Mentoring
Michael Rembis, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Disability Studies
Michael Rembis
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.
2018 Awardee for Excellence in Mentoring
Ewa Ziarek, Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature
Ewa Ziarek
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."
2017 Mentoring Award Winners
Elizabeth "Libby" Otto
Hershini Young
2016 Mentoring Award Winners
Letitia Thomas
Susan Cahn