Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award winners announced

Updated 11:00 AM April 26, 2004

Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award winners announced

By the Office of the Provost
and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Five faculty members have been named winners of the 2004 Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award. Established in 1996, the award was named in recognition of Johnson, dean emeritus of the School of Social Work. Award recipients are recognized for their commitment to the development of a more culturally and ethnically diverse campus community. Awardees receive $5,000 to further their personal research, teaching and scholarship activities.

Fatma Müge Göçek

Göçek is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology. Howard Kimeldorf, professor and chair of sociology, says Göçek has shown extraordinary leadership in fostering dialogue within and between the diverse communities that are represented on campus and beyond. Believing firmly in the power of truth and reason to overcome

Göçek (Photo courtesy Fatma Muge Gocek)

ignorance and prejudice, Göçek has initiated a scholarly engagement between Turks and Armenians, and she has offered innovative courses on Middle Eastern societies that instill within her students a respect for religious and ethnic diversity while promoting understanding and tolerance of different cultures, her nominators say.

In the late 1980s Göçek offered some of the first undergraduate courses on campus that explored controversial topics, such as the role of women under Islam. The class drew growing numbers of western feminists, conservative Christians, fundamentalist Muslims and others.

Included among the more than 50 dissertation committees on which she has served and the nearly two dozen undergraduate honors theses she has supervised are many international students from regions of the world other than the Middle East, as well as students of color and white students, men as well as women. Göçek is committed to diversity in all that she does, from her forthcoming book, to her efforts to further dialogue between Turks and Armenians, to her classes on Middle Eastern society, to her mentoring of the increasingly multicultural student body, her nominators say.

Dr. David Gordon

Gordon's commitment to the centrality of diversity, as an important part of the University's missions, is demonstrated best by his comprehensive model of how diversity affects all three missions of the University, notes Dr. John Billi, associate dean of clinical affairs. His model addresses health inequality through training of health professionals, health services research, and a focus on the genetic and physiologic basis for disparities, his nominators say.

Gordon (Photo by BMC Media)

Gordon has served as assistant dean for diversity and career development at the Medical School since March 2001. Dr. Allen Lichter, dean of the Medical School, says that when Gordon was hired as an assistant dean, his designated duties were to work with minority students and to help promote minority faculty recruitment and retention.

Gordon is director of the Diversity & Career Development Office (DCDO), created at the Medical School in September 2002 after extensive background work by Gordon. DCDO's vision is to create a Medical School environment that promotes and values diversity and develops the expertise and individuals that will improve the health of historically underserved and underrepresented populations. Through DCDO, he has initiated and assumed responsibility for several programs and efforts that enhance diversity at the Medical School and help position U-M as a school to address health disparities through research and teaching, including the Minority Health Research Program and others, his nominators say.

Mark E. Lewis

Lewis is an assistant professor of industrial and operations engineering (IOE). Lawrence Seiford, chair of the IOE Department, notes that Lewis was selected as the Sloan Foundation's Mentor of the Year and received the award at the Compact for Faculty Diversity sponsored by the Southern Regional Education Board. The Sloan Foundation presents the annual award to faculty who mentor underrepresented minority students.

Lewis (File photo by Bill Wood, U-M Photo Services)

At the national level, Lewis has been active in his major professional society, The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). He founded the Minority Issues Forum within INFORMS and has served three terms as president. Don Chaffin, chair of the IOE Honors and Awards Committee, notes that Lewis has led a state initiative to provide more awareness of minority educational activities at U-M through his work with the National Society of Black Engineers. Lewis has received a National Science Foundation CAREER award. He is a member of several other committees and is faculty adviser to the INFORMS student chapter and his department's minority student organization.

When Lewis joined the department in fall 1999, it had no minority doctoral students. He submitted a proposal to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for an effort to increase the number of minority students; the proposal was funded and served as the basis for a significant recruiting effort. As a measure of his success, this year there are 10 minority doctoral students, and five of them are Sloan Fellows, his nominators say.

Paul Rasmussen

Rasmussen is professor of chemistry and a member of the Intercollegiate Macromolecular Science & Engineering Program. William Roush, chair of the Chemistry Department, notes that Rasmussen has a long record of excellence in teaching and mentoring and has worked to establish a climate of welcome and respect for all chemistry students.

Rasmussen (Photo courtesy Paul Rasmussen)

In addition to Rasmussen's extensive mentoring activities, he has been active in recruiting and gaining support for minority students. In 1998 he obtained a grant from the Sloan Foundation (with professor B.J. Evans) to support fellowships for students studying materials chemistry.

The program has continued under his leadership. In 1999 Rasmussen co-directed an NSF-AGEP project to improve minority recruitment in the science, engineering and mathematics field. He also participated in the Community Information Corps recruitment caravan tour of Puerto Rico. Through efforts such as these, the Chemistry Department's enrollment of underrepresented minority graduate students is at an all-time high, his nominators say.

In 2001 Rasmussen joined the LSA Dean's Office as associate dean for research and graduate studies and has led LSA's participation in IMPACT—a new effort at U-M to recruit underrepresented minority students from across the country. As associate dean, Rasmussen has been effective in urging departments to participate in IMPACT and improve their recruitment of a diverse student population.

David Scobey

Scobey is an associate professor in the Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning and founding director of the Arts of Citizenship Program. His commitment to diversity is central to all that he has done in his 15 years at U-M, his nominators say.

Scobey (Photo by Marcia Ledford, U-M Photo Services)

Several projects that Scobey has conceptualized and implemented illustrate his dedication to diversity, they say. For instance, in the Underground Railroad Project Scobey has set up teams of U-M faculty and students since 1999 to partner with the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County for groundbreaking research on the Underground Railroad, antislavery activism, and African American community life in 19th century Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Since 1998, a project called Students on Site has brought together U-M faculty, archivists and students with local K-12 teachers to use Ann Arbor's historic riverfront district as the site for an interdisciplinary curriculum for elementary classrooms. One of the ways for U-M undergraduates to get involved in community projects has been the course "Community Projects in the Arts and Humanities," created by Scobey and inaugurated in fall term 2000.

Scobey has served on many University-wide committees in which he has been a voice promoting diversity and was author of the final report of the President's Commission on the Undergraduate Experience (2001), his nominators say.

Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award winners announced

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