Outstanding Faculty Service Award for Susan Mooney

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 2011 Stonehill College is proud to bestow the Outstanding Faculty Service Award on Professor Susan M. Mooney.

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.

A decade ago, as we began our general education reform, you emerged as a faculty leader. First, you attended the Asheville Institute on General Education and began to develop a real interest in integrative learning. Then, you stood out as a key player in crafting the Cornerstone Program and in championing it with faculty colleagues.

Against your own inclinations, you agreed to serve in the role of Director of General Education for the four-year implementation of the Cornerstone Program. When a Governance commission reorganized the academic division, you became Dean of General Education, though you were tenacious in protesting that you did not want to be a dean! But as Director and then Dean, you made extraordinary contributions, shaping the first-year core, bringing faculty members together in the complex dance of creating learning communities, defining and redefining the goals of moral inquiry, and coaxing departments forward as they developed senior capstone experiences. At the end of your four-year term, you gave a gentle reminder that you wanted to return to the classroom, and there you continue to make an amazing difference.

Indeed, you found faculty and student allies for developing an environmental focus at the College, and you worked to develop a new major and minor in Environmental Studies. Interest in this area grows annually, in no small part because of your energy. Your teaching interests spill over into other areas of college life. Because of your expertise, you act as the advisor to Students for Environmental Awareness, and as the chair of the College’s Environmental Stewardship Committee. With your help, these groups will continue to shape Stonehill’s environmental commitments.

You have, in fact, served on numerous college committees since joining the faculty in 1985: the Student Affairs Committee, the College Discipline Committee, the College Discipline Appeals Committee, the ad hoc Childcare Committee, the Rank and Tenure Committee—the list goes on. But anyone who has served with you knows how you bring a keen intelligence to so many aspects of College life.

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

Given this twelfth day of May,

Two thousand and eleven.