Feb. 2, 2009

Two CU Professors Earn Award for Advancing Women in Academia
UCCS, UCD Faculty Members to Receive Elizabeth D. Gee Memorial Award

DENVER—Two University of Colorado professors are the winners of the 2008 Elizabeth D. Gee Memorial Lectureship Award, which honors teaching, scholarship and interdisciplinary collaboration that has helped advance women in higher education.

Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and Mary Coussons-Read, who teaches psychology at the University of Colorado Denver, will receive the award at the 2009 CU Women Succeeding: Sixth Annual Faculty Development Symposium.

The symposium will take place on Friday, March 6, on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. Each honoree will receive a $1,000 cash award and present her scholarly work to other faculty members.

The CU Faculty Council’s women’s committee has conferred the award annually since 1992 in recognition of faculty members whose records reflect significant, original and interdisciplinary work; teaching excellence; and a strong commitment toward advancing women in the academic community. The award’s namesake is the late Elizabeth D. Gee, who taught at the UC Denver School of Nursing and was married to former CU President Gordon Gee.

“This year’s winners were strong in all areas, but showed evidence of substantially advancing women in and beyond their academic communities,” said Stephanie Blake, an assistant professor of communication at CU-Colorado Springs, who chairs the Faculty Council’s women’s committee and chaired the Gee Award selection committee.

The Gee Award is the only award in the CU system that specifically recognizes outstanding work on women’s issues. Any full-time faculty member from any of the CU campuses in Boulder, Colorado Springs and Denver may be nominated for the prize. To learn more about the award, go to http://www.cu.edu/FacultyCouncil/Women/gee.html.

The University of Colorado has three campuses at four locations: the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the University of Colorado Denver’s Downtown Denver Campus and Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. Nearly 54,000 undergraduate and graduate students are pursuing academic opportunities on CU campuses. CU is a premier teaching and research university that is ranked sixth among public institutions in federal research expenditures by the National Science Foundation. Academic prestige is marked by the university’s four Nobel laureates, seven MacArthur “genius” Fellows, 18 alumni astronauts and 19 Rhodes Scholars. For more information about the University of Colorado system, visit www.cu.edu.

Andrea O’Reilly Herrera

Press contacts:

• Tom Hutton, UCCS, 719-255-3439, thutton@uccs.edu
  
• Jacque Montgomery, UCD, 303-724-1528, jacque.montgomery@ucdenver.edu
  
• Deborah Méndez-Wilson, CU System Administration, 303-8605627
  Deborah.Mendez-Wilson@cu.edu