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 2009 Stonehill College is proud to bestow the Outstanding Faculty Service Award on Professor Maria A. Curtin.

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.  

You admirably guided your department as chairperson from 1997-2000 through the many changes and improvements that led to Stonehill’s certification by the American Chemical Society.  One of your colleagues remarked that this required you to “deal with different personalities within the Chemistry Department,” including his own “headstrong we can’t make the needed changes fast enough attitude.”  Your work in this capacity was truly exceptional—steering not only critical curriculum changes, but also overseeing the direction of two successful searches. 

You have served on almost every college committee since joining the faculty in 1993: Career Planning, Convocation, General Studies, Small Grants, Library, Academic Committee, Faculty Grievance, and—through an especially crucial time with the implementation of a new program—General  Education.  This is a partial list of your committee service, but it suggests how your formidable intelligence has come to bear on many aspects of College life. 

Perhaps that early governance work prepared you to join the Faculty Senate and to assume the role of Senate Vice President, for you have again brought energy and insight to these roles.  Your organizational skill ensures that the good work and discussion of the Senate culminates in decisions that are efficiently passed on to the administration, and your diplomacy has assisted more than once in ensuring that those decisions become policy. 

Finally, your work for the last three years to shepherd the new Science Center from architect’s sketch to reality has been nothing short of remarkable.  You had to balance the interests of working scientists with those of architects, engineers, and builders.  Your science peers, to a person, tell me that you were the perfect person for this role—that your ability to listen, to persuade, to compromise, and to stand firm when necessary have resulted in a building we will all be proud of. 

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

Given this 8th day of May, Two thousand and nine. 

 

Katie Conboy 

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs