The School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics is proud to present the awardees for academic year 2023-24.

SLCL Diversity Awards

This year’s diversity award winners are Eman Saadah and Luis David Gaytán-Soto. 

To read our previous announcement of the SLCL Diversity & Engagement Award and the Xiaohui Zhang Diversity & Community Engagement Award, please click here. 

Marita Romine Distinguished Service Award

This award was established in 2011 through the generosity of Douglas Kibbee, the first director of the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, to honor a selected staff member for outstanding contributions to the school. 

This year, we were happy to be able to give out two awards.

The first awardee is facilities operations coordinator Nate Payne. Below are some of the comments nominators made about Nate: 

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"In my 18 years working in LCLB, Nate is by far the most dedicated and best facilities manager we have had. He takes pride in his work and in our building, and it shows in everything he does. He focuses not just on [the timing of repairs]—which he does efficiently, by dispatching the relevant crews and clearly communicating with everyone about the process—but is also always looking to make improvements."

"Nate is the heart and soul of facilities in our building. He has [excellent] attention to detail and always goes the extra mile to make sure things are “just so”—especially when we have special events. He makes SLCL and LCLB look good, not just figuratively in his attitude and approach, but literally, as well."

Our second awardee is assistant to the director Marcia Bellafiore. Below are some of the comments nominators made about Marcia: 

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"Since I have known Marcia, she has been a bright spot to many. She frequently checks on faculty, staff, and students, and just wants to make sure that everyone is having a great day. She will even do this if she’s having a rough day, which speaks to her character. By the time her check-ins are done, everyone walks away smiling, with a much better disposition to make it through the rest of the workday. "

"Marcia is always willing to help others, and even when she doesn’t have an answer, she will go out of her way to help find a solution. She has a nurturing attitude, and that shines through in meetings when she asks others for their opinion and makes everyone feel like part of the team. She is very deserving of this award."

SLCL Summer Fellowships for Specialized Faculty

These fellowships are designed to support summer research by specialized faculty and academic professionals. Proposals must be approved by the department and are then reviewed and judged by the executive committee.

• Michelle Dutton, lecturer in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, for her research project, “Why do Midwestern University Students Study Spanish? A Qualitative Study Exploring Ideal L2 Selves, Rooted L2 Selves, and Investment”
• Ali Saeedi, instructor in the Department of Linguistics, for his research project, “The Race for Quality: Comparing Neural Machine and AI-Powered Translation Performance in the American Translators Association Exam”
• Kara Yarrington, teaching assistant professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, for her research project, “Interactive Writing in the Beginning Language Classroom: Improving Novice L2 Learners’ Writing through Multi-Draft Composing”

SLCL Dissertation Completion Fellowships 

These fellowships provide advanced doctoral students with an academic year of support to complete their dissertations. Eligible candidates are nominated by their departments.

• Soraya Cipolla, PhD candidate in the Department of French & Italian, “Queer Specters: Sapphic Desire in Italian Literature and Cinema (1980 – 2023)”
• Julia Gorham, PhD candidate in the Department of French & Italian, “L2 French Students’ and Instructors’ Experiences of Critical Literacies Pedagogy: A Mixed Methods Program Evaluation”
• Mai Mohamed Eida, PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics, “Morphological Modelling of Sa’idi Egyptian Arabic”
• Nobuto Sato, PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative & World Literature, “Voicing the Material: Aurality in U.S., Yiddish, and Japanese Modernisms”

Douglas A. Kibbee Prize

The Douglas A. Kibbee Prize was created by colleagues, friends, and students of Douglas Kibbee in honor of his distinguished career and service as the first director of the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics on the occasion of his retirement in 2010. The Kibbee Prize is awarded annually to the recipient of an SLCL Dissertation Completion Fellowship whose dissertation project is judged by the school’s executive committee to be the most outstanding.

• Julia Gorham, PhD candidate in the Department of French & Italian, “L2 French Students’ and Instructors’ Experiences of Critical Literacies Pedagogy: A Mixed Methods Program Evaluation" 

FLTE Future Teacher Awards

The Foreign Language Teacher Education program offers two annual awards, one to an undergraduate student and one to a graduate student enrolled in the program. These awards seek to both recognize the professional and academic excellence of teacher candidates and provide financial support to assist them with the costs related to student teaching during their final semester.

• Sophia Caruso, Spanish major in the FLTE program with a minor in teaching English as a second language (TESL)
• Sophia Warnement, master's student in the Department of Classics; completing FLTE program to become a secondary school Latin teacher 

Congratulations to all of this year’s awardees!