CGS congratulates its faculty recipients of the College of LAS teaching and advising awards. The College of LAS selected 14 professors, graduate students, lecturers, and an advisor as recipients of the 2024 teaching and advising awards. The CGS affiliates and recipients are Konstantinos (Kostas) Kourtikakis, Brian Dill, Silvina Montrul, Harriet Murav, Antoinette Burton, Matthew Finkin, Virginia Dominguez and D. Fairchild Ruggles.
Konstantinos Kourtikakis, a teaching associate professor in the Department of Political Science received the LAS Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for Instructional Staff. Kourtikakis has been on the list of teachers ranked as excellent 58 times. “I consider him to be an integral component of my academic career, as he has helped me build the foundation of what I hope to be a long and meaningful career in foreign policy,” wrote a former student now at the U.S. State Department.
Brian Dill received the LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and he is known for sustained excellence, innovative teaching, and fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. “I have watched Professor Dill transform what I thought would be boring lecture material into a vibrant and engaged lecture. He seems to have a gift for connecting students to new information in diverse ways to ‘cover all the bases’ and engage students who possess different learning styles,” wrote Reuben May, head of the Department of Sociology.
Silvina Montrul and Harriet Murav both received Faculty Honors in the Language Faculty category. Silvina Montrul was selected as the winner of this year’s Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistics Society of America book “Native Speakers, Interrupted.” Montrul was also ranked in the top two percent of the world's scientists, according to a Stanford University ranking based on the Scopus database. Harriet Murav won a prestigious NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations Award for her collaborative translation of “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union.”
Antoinette Burton, Professor of History and Matthew Finkin, Professor of Law both received the Swanlund Endowed Chairs title. Swanlund Endowed Chairs are made possible by a gift from the late Maybelle Leland Swanlund, who received a degree in Library Sciences from Illinois in 1932 and recognize current faculty members who have made exceptional contributions in their fields.
CGS faculty Virginia Dominguez received the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell endowed professorships appointment to promote faculty development and ensure high achievement. Gutgsell professorships are five-year renewable term appointments and provide funds for scholarly activities associated with individual fields of distinction.
D. Fairchild Ruggles received the Presidential Humanities and Social Science Chair appointment. This appointment was established through an endowment from the University of Illinois President to support humanities and social science scholars whose research focuses on innovation and discovery.
CGS is proud to highlight the teaching, advising, and service accomplishments of its faculty affiliates for the past year and we look forward to more achievements in excellence.
