ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â

ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â has announced recipients of the University Senate Awards and the list of new faculty emeriti.

The emeritus or emerita title is given to qualified retired faculty and academic administrators who have been recommended through a department-based process to the Academic Committee of the University Senate. The recommendation of the Academic Committee is reviewed by the University Senate as a body, and then by the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â Council of Trustees.

The University Senate Awards, presented since 1969, recognize outstanding faculty for excellence in creative arts, research, service, and teaching. The announcement of the University Senate Awards is included in the university’s May commencement program booklet.

University Senate Awards Recipients for 2023

Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Arts: Sharon Massey, Jewelry and Metals

Distinguished Faculty Award for Research: Waleed Farag, Computer Science

Distinguished Faculty Award for Service:  Lynn Botelho, History

Distinguished Staff Award for Service: Cindy Varner, Registrar’s Office

Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching: Crystal Machado, Professional Studies in Education  

Distinguished University Professor: Xi Wang, History

New Faculty Emeriti

along with their departments and years of service to ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â

College of Arts and Humanities

• David Chambers, Political Science, 33 years of service
• Sharon Deckert, English, 16 years of service
• Kevin Eisensmith, Music, 23 years of service
• Sharon Franklin-Rahkonen, History, 25 years of service
• Heather Powers, English, 22 years of service
• Steven Schroeder, History, 31 years of service
• Theresa Smith, Philosophy and Religious Studies, 32 years of service

Eberly College of Business

• Charlene Bebko, Marketing, 30 years of service
• Robert Boldin, Finance and Economics, 41 years of service
• Germain Kline, Accounting and Information Systems, 39 years of service
• Joette Wisnieski, Management, 26 years of service

College of Education and Communications

• Joann Migyanka, Communications Disorders, Special Education, and Disability Services, 15 years of service
• John Mueller, Student Affairs in Higher Education, 22 years of service

College of Health and Human Services

• Michael Korns, Employment Relations and Health Services Administration, 17 years of service
• David LaPorte*, Psychology, 26 years of service
• Maureen McHugh, Psychology, 35 years of service
• John Mills, Psychology, 34 years of service
• Catherine Raeff, Psychology, 26 years of service

ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â Libraries

• Yaw Asamoah, University Libraries and University College, 37 years of service

Kopchick College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

• Karen Rose Cercone, Geography, Geology, Environment, and Planning, 35 years of service
• Victor Garcia, Anthropology, 30 years of service
• Christopher Janicak, Safety Sciences, 20 years of service
• Majid Karimi, Madia Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering, 29 years of service
• George Long, Madia Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering, 33 years of service
• Robert Sechrist, Geography, Geology, Environment, and Planning, 34 years of service

Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Arts

Sharon Massey

Associate Professor Sharon Massey is a metalsmith, jeweler, and enamelist whose artwork has been exhibited in over 100 juried and invitational exhibitions around the world, in venues such as the Tokyo Museum of Art in Japan; Glass-Museum ZIBA in Prague, Czech Republic; the Museum of Brazilian Object in São Paulo, Brazil; and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Her work has been included in numerous publications, including American Craft and Metalsmith magazines, The Art of Enameling, and Art Jewelry Today second, third, and fourth editions. Massey’s work is included in 11 public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Massey has been invited to teach workshops at Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School for Crafts, the 92^nd St Y in NYC, the Baltimore Jewelry Center, and at universities around the US. She serves on the board of trustees of the Enamelist Society and has previously served on the board of directors of the Society of North American Goldsmiths. She received a BFA from Winthrop University in 1999 and an MFA from East Carolina University in 2006. Her research interests include historical jewelry and adornment as well as new approaches to education and making with emerging technologies.

Distinguished Faculty Award for Research

Waleed Farag

Waleed Farag is a professor of computer science and the director of ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â’s Institute for Cybersecurity. As PI, Farag has secured 26 major funded grants with budgets exceeding $15 million to support his scholarly work. These projects, funded by the NSF, DoD, and NSA, established unique initiatives that contribute to the enhancement of cybersecurity research and education across the nation. He is currently the PI of two cutting-edge funded research projects: IoT Anomaly Detection and ARMZTA. Additionally, he is leading other projects including the PC4A (largest grant in ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â history), the Cyber Scholarship Program, and GenCyber, among others.

Farag’s research interests include autonomous risk mitigation, IoT security, AI/Multimedia applications, cybersecurity education, and e-learning. He has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications/presentations, and his work was awarded Best Paper in SIGITE 2012. He is a member of Sigma Xi, ACM and IEEE.

Farag was selected from a handful of national experts as a referee for the $16-million National Cybersecurity Curriculum Project. He serves on the TPC of several major publications and as an external evaluator of faculty promotion applications for several universities across the US. In recognition of his unprecedented achievements, Farag was awarded the inaugural Raising the Research Profile of ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â and the KCNSM 2023 Dean’s Outstanding Researcher awards. He also received numerous ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â Sponsored Programs Awards for Outstanding Achievements in Research, Public Service, Commitment to Sponsored Programs, and Centers and Institutes.

Farag oversees the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â Cybersecurity program and has worked diligently since 2002 to ensure its continued designation as a National Center of Academic Excellence. He organized numerous security conferences and meetings, including the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â Annual Cybersecurity Day. Farag received his PhD in computer science in 2002 from ODU, USA. He also holds a master’s degree in engineering and bachelor of electrical engineering, both from Zagazig University, Egypt.

Distinguished Faculty Award for Service

Lynn Botelho

Lynn Botelho has been at ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â for nearly 30 years and has served widely across the university, as well as nationally and internationally. Botelho’s efforts are primarily focused in two areas: diversity, equity, and inclusion, and British Studies. Botelho’s emphasis is on community building and generating positive change.

Recently, Botelho received over $200,000 to establish Big Ideas: Transformative Culture and the Professions. This impactful certificate develops students through a curiosity/creativity-first approach to literature and global/multicultural awareness. Big Ideas partners with existing student success centers and builds student community through a shared reading of transformative texts and visits to the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â theatre and museum. Graduate students are mentored through teaching opportunities and engaged support. Its faculty and graduate students participate in teaching circles, shared professional development workshops, and collective visits to public lectures. For this work, Botelho received the High Impact Teaching Award from the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â School of Graduate Studies and Research.

Botelho has a long history of striving to create welcoming communities and expanding awareness of diversity. At Cambridge University, when women’s history was not a “subject,” Botelho was a founding member of the UK’s Women’s History Network, a still thriving professional organization. While at ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â, Botelho was the director of Women’s and Gender Studies and the co-organizer of the Elephant in the Room: Conversation and Action for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in the Classroom and Beyond workshops and training certificates. Botelho has been recognized with the Excellence in Service to Students Award from the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â chapter of the National Society of Leadership and Success, as well as BNY Mellon’s Leadership Conference. With Shawn Jones, Botelho is currently the cochair of the President’s Commission on DEI.

Botelho is a British historian and has served her profession by holding positions with international British Studies executive boards, including as executive treasurer for the North American Conference on British Studies.

Distinguished Staff Award for Service

Cindy Varner

Cindy Varner joined the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â community in 1999. As a senior scheduling specialist, management technician in the Registrar’s Office, she specializes in schedule build and course registration. As an administrator of 25Live Room Reservation Software, she helps the entire campus community find suitable locations for classes, meetings, and events.

Varner is student-centered and excels at assisting students with registration issues. She is a genuine advocate of ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â students and is an expert in helping them understand the entire registration process. As the Registrar’s Office notary, she assists with diploma and transcript notarizations. She often goes the extra mile, searching for a missing diploma, managing any last-minute registration issues, or finding suitable locations for classes in need of larger accommodation or emergency changes.

As a valuable team member, she is responsible for providing academic scheduling training for co-workers, departmental staff members, chairs, deans, and a-deans.  The university-wide class schedule is ever-changing, and she works diligently to process the updates from the dean’s offices in a timely manner to ensure the most current information is available for student scheduling. She is a self-starter who takes the initiative to update processes for increased efficiency and productivity.

Varner has been a volunteer for the Undergraduate Commencement Ceremonies for the last 15 years. She finds it rewarding to see the excitement of graduating students and their family members and joins them in the celebration of their accomplishments and perseverance. 

Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching

Crystal Machado

Crystal Machado is a professor in the Department of Professional Studies in Education, where she teaches pre-service and in-service teachers, faculty, and K-20 administrators. Prior to joining ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â, Machado worked as a K-12 teacher, a middle/high school administrator, and an adjunct professor for many years in Pakistan. She holds a doctoral degree in educational leadership; two master's degrees, one in school administration and the other in primary education; and two bachelor's degrees, one in business and the other in education. Her commitment to creating inclusive, technology-rich learning environments, and mentoring, is reflected in her teaching, research, and service.  

Machado’s educational philosophy is grounded in problem-posing pedagogy, social constructivism, and P21 skills, better known as the 4Cs: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. She developed her technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) skills by attending more than 100 workshops. To increase student access to tools and training, she co-authored 11 grants; these include an Emerging Technologies Mobile Learning Award ($18,651) and a co-authored National Security Association grant ($212,000). She uses performance-based instructional strategies to promote high levels of student engagement, critical thinking, cross-cultural competence, and reflective practice.  

For over two decades, Machado has used the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning approach to study and improve her practice as a teacher, leader, and mentor. Her curriculum vitae documents a long history of doctoral student research mentorship. She also mentors postgraduate students and novice scholars. She has co-authored a book and published many book chapters and journal articles. Her scholarship related to teaching and learning was recognized by the Center for Teaching Excellence with the Pedagogical Research Award in 2015, the Collaborative Practice Award with Kelly Heider in 2022, and Merit Awards for Research and Scholarship (2012, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022). She was named  in 2022 by Affordable Learning Pennsylvania.

Distinguished University Professor

Xi Wang

Xi Wang, professor of history, has been on the ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â faculty since 1994. Specializing in African American history, the nineteenth-century United States, and American constitutionalism, Wang has taught courses spanning all levels and serving diverse university needs, including the Junior Core of the Cook Honors College. He has served as the chair of the History Department, worked on the committees devoted to Liberal Studies, Pan-African Studies and Asian Studies, brought prominent speakers to campus, and organized regional and national conferences at ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â.

With a publication record of 16 books (monographs, edited volumes, and translations combined) and 75 journal articles and book chapters, published in English and Chinese, Wang has established a solid national and international reputation in his fields of study. His The Trial of Democracy: Northern Republicans and Black Suffrage, 1860–1910, first published in 1997 and nominated for 12 academic awards, continues to be cited by scholars from different disciplines. His 988-page study on the history of the US Constitution, already in its eighth reprint since its publication in 2014, is an indispensable guide for Chinese academia and law students to understand the workings of American constitutionalism. His 12-year stewardship as the chief editor has paved the way for the Chinese Historical Review to be published by Routledge and distributed worldwide. He has been invited to present at more than 50 regional, national, and international conferences, including the 2002 Civil War History Symposium at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and the 2014 History Forum at the National Library of China in Beijing.

Wang’s extensive and impactful transnational teaching and writing of US history have been recognized by both American and Chinese academias. He has held a prestigious Chang Jiang Scholar Professorship, jointly appointed by the Ministry of Education of China and Li Ka Shing Foundation in Hong Kong, with which he has worked with the History Department of Peking University to train a new generation of China’s Americanists. He has vitally assisted the Organization of American Historians’ endeavors to internationalize the study of US history, particularly in China. He has been instrumental in helping ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â to establish its partnership with Hebei University, China, which, among other things, has resulted in a joint international conference on historical research and the publication of its proceedings contributed by historians from both institutions.

As ÑÇÉ«Ó°¿â’s 2022–23 Distinguished University Professor, Wang has been working on a book manuscript on the history of African American voting rights and a new course focusing on the history of US immigration.