Outstanding Faculty Service Award for John Golden

The Outstanding Faculty Service Award is given to a full-time faculty member whose service has significantly advanced the mission of Stonehill College. Education for citizenship is integral to a liberal arts education, and just as we expect our students to lead lives of purpose and to make a difference in the world, we expect the same from our faculty. Therefore, public service and service to the academic community are highly valued by the faculty at Stonehill College. This award recognizes a cumulative record of noteworthy accomplishment in service on the part of a faculty member. The recipient stands as a symbol of the entire faculty’s commitment to sustaining our community. In 2012 Stonehill College is proud to bestow the Outstanding Faculty Service Award on Professor John J. Golden.

Your commitment to Stonehill’s mission is abundantly clear to all who work with you. While compiling an excellent teaching portfolio and a record of scholarly achievement, you have also—in one capacity after another—shown your willingness to better our Stonehill community.

When you applied for your faculty position at Stonehill, one of your recommenders had this to say about you: “In person, he is utterly engaging: good humor and solidly serious at once, something of a born scholar without academic tics or professional kinks.” This oddly prophetic utterance has captured your twenty-four years as a member of our faculty: engaged, thorough, full of good humor and deeply committed to the life of the mind. But today we focus on your lack of academic tics and professional kinks! Knowing all too well that you would lecture us on sloppy translation, we believe this phrase points us to your ability to rise above ego in order to serve students, colleagues and the College.

The gift you received with tenure in 1992 was two terms as Department Chair, a gift that was returned to you in 2010. While teaching and advising a full complement of students, yours has been the necessary yet thankless task of scoring countless language placement tests and placing countless first year students into countless language courses. Your abiding commitment to foreign language as constitutive to liberal learning makes your voice invaluable to revisions to the general education curriculum and to the work of the General Education Committee.

Besides your memorable t-shirts, a recurring theme throughout your many years of service is accountability. You hold students to a high standard through your service on the Academic Appeals Board, Campus Discipline Committee and the Honors Program Advisory Committee. You inspire your faculty colleagues towards excellence through your service on the Rank and Tenure Committee, your assistance with Academic Development Day and many, many pre-tenure review committees. And you challenge the College administration to honor faculty work through your service on the Credit Model and Faculty Workload Committees. You were the first member of the faculty to teach in the ACE Program. The list of committees goes on and on and so does your unflinching allegiance to saying what you do and doing what you say.

If we were to ask you to rate your own contributions to the College, you might humbly respond, “Adequate plus.” But we your colleagues know that these twenty-four years of service have the mark of something far beyond adequate.

And so with deep pride we today recognize you, Professor John Golden, for your tireless service, consistent example, and exemplary contributions to Stonehill College.

Given this tenth day of May,

Two thousand and twelve