海角论坛

The 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences is proud to honor the outstanding faculty and staff who make up its exceptional community of scholars.

Three professors received Dean鈥檚 Awards for Excellence in Teaching: , , and . Two staff members received the Distinguished Service Staff Award: Karen Lautman and Leslie Byers. received the Stevens Award and received the Tosetti Award. received the Cond茅 Nast Award and received the Farr Faculty Excellence Award.

鈥淲e are thrilled to celebrate the work and achievements of our esteemed faculty and staff,鈥� said Interim Dean Andrew Sobanet. 鈥淭he honorees for this year鈥檚 convocation are proof that the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences鈥� dedication to teaching, discovery, and service is thriving.鈥�

Jo Ann Moran Cruz

Jo Ann Moran Cruz, the co-founder of the and a professor in the , received the Dean鈥檚 Awards for Excellence in Teaching. 

Cruz has held key administrative roles, including Dean of Humanities and Natural Sciences at Loyola University, New Orleans, and former chair of the department at Georgetown. A leading scholar in late medieval education and literacy, she authored The Growth of English Schooling, 1340-1530, co-authored Medieval Worlds, and has published extensively on education, literacy, and religious history. 

Her recent work includes studies on Dante, E.M. Forster, and Elizabethan family history, as well as an edited volume, The Cultural History of Education in the Middle Ages. She is currently working on her new book Gender and Power in Europe, 800-1600, for Routledge Press.

Christine So

Christine So, an associate professor in the , received the Dean鈥檚 Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

Professor So, who joined Georgetown in 1998, is a specialist in Asian American Studies, Critical Race Studies, and literatures of the US empire. She authors the book Economic Citizens: A Narrative of Asian American Visibility, where she traces the logic of race, capital, and commensurate value in Asian American literature. She is currently at work on her book project, Unrecognizable Subjects: Reinventing Legal and Literary Epistemologies of Asian America, where she unpacks the law鈥檚 rigid and forceful ordering of what begins as a vague and indeterminate moment of Asian American emergence.

At Georgetown, she created and taught courses such as 鈥淚ntroduction to Asian American Studies,鈥� 鈥淚ntroduction to Race and Ethnic Studies,鈥� 鈥淩ace, Law, and Literature,鈥� and 鈥淎fterlives of US Empire.鈥�

Clay Shields

Clay Shields, a professor in the , received a Dean鈥檚 Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

Shields, who has taught on the Hilltop for some 25 years, teaches programming, security, and computer systems while continuing to research in computer and network security. He was born in Washington, D.C, and spent much of his childhood living overseas as required by the career of his stepfather, who was a covert agent for the CIA. 

Upon earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, Shields served as an infantry officer. He later attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and for his PHD dissertation in Computer Engineering. Before coming to Georgetown in 2001, he worked as an assistant professor at Purdue University. 

Karen Lautman

Karen Lautman, who serves as the Department Administrator in the received the Distinguished Service Staff Award. 

This award is given to staff who have a record of extraordinary service within a department or program, and who have demonstrated selflessness as people for others, cura personalis, commitment to community in diversity, and creative leadership and service in support of academic excellence.

鈥淕eorgetown is a wonderful community. There are some very decent people on campus, and I am privileged to know many of them.鈥�

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Lautman came to Georgetown in 1990 as part of the Lauinger Library administration team. After 4 years in the library, Lautman was offered a position in the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences Dean鈥檚 Office, where she remained for 6 years. In 2000 she was invited to become the Administrator of the English Department, where she has happily stayed for 24 years. 

Before moving to Washington, Lautman was a professional singer and has sung with numerous ensembles in the area in a range of musical styles. She was the house soloist at St. Patrick鈥檚 Church in downtown Washington for 19 years. 

Leslie Byers

Leslie Byers, a program coordinator in the , received a Distinguished Service Staff Award. 

Byers, born in Germany, has lived and traveled worldwide. She studied physiological psychology at the University of Utah and holds a certificate in social work. Before Georgetown, she worked as a social worker, au pair coordinator, master gardener, and TV producer. After 32 years at Georgetown, she retires in June 2025, continuing her gardening and community work. 

Reflecting on her time, Byers says, “I am very humbled to receive this award–I literally know a dozen other staff members who deserve it as much or more than I. It’s been a huge pleasure to work at Georgetown and serve so many fantastic and smart faculty, staff, and students over the years. I will miss it terribly.”

Rebecca Ryan

Rebecca Ryan, a professor in the , received the Stevens Award. 

鈥嬧�婽he Stevens Faculty Excellence Award award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research, and innovation in a social sciences field.

Ryan researches how low income impacts parenting and child development. She focuses on parent-child interactions, resource investment, and interventions to enhance parental engagement. Her recent work includes a randomized trial using video chat to improve parenting and a field study on meal programs for low-income Latinx families. Her research has been continuously funded by both federal and private institutions, including the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the WT Grant Foundation.

Patrick O’Malley

Patrick O’Malley, a professor in the , received the Tosetti Award. 

The Tosetti Faculty Award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research, and innovation in the humanities.

O’Malley has taught in the English Department at Georgetown for 25 years, with a focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and Irish literature, gothic novels, gender and sexuality studies, and critical theory. He has served as both Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Graduate Studies for the English Department. He’s the author of three award-winning books on Victorian and Irish literature. 

A highlight of his teaching has been interdisciplinary co-teaching first-year undergraduate seminars with faculty from the History Department in the Liberal Arts Seminar and, more recently, in the “Ways of Knowing” seminars offered by the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences.

Alison Mackey

Alison Mackey, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and Chair of the , received the Cond茅 Nast Award. 

First awarded in 1966 by the 海角论坛 Student Council to honor the memory of the first President of the Yard, the Cond茅 Nast Award is awarded annually by the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences to a faculty member who has served the 海角论坛 with distinguished teaching, research and service or leadership.

Mackey, a leading expert in second language learning and research methodology, is among the world’s top ten most-cited scholars in her field. She has published 100+ journal articles, 19 books, and received numerous awards, including the 2023 International TBLT Association鈥檚 Distinguished Achievement Award. 

A Georgetown professor for 27 years, Mackey has served on key university committees and was Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. She finds great joy in mentoring Ph.D. students and co-creating the Linguistics Department鈥檚 RULE class, which pairs undergraduates with advanced graduate researchers.

Micah Sherr

Micah Sherr, the Callahan Family Professor of Computer Science in the , received the Farr Faculty Excellence Award.

The Farr Faculty Excellence Award honors excellent faculty research, effective mentoring of student research and/or innovative dissemination of scientific knowledge in the natural sciences, computer science, mathematics and statistics and psychology. 

Sherr鈥檚 academic interests include censorship and censorship-resistance, electronic voting, wiretap systems, and more broadly, privacy-preserving technologies. He participated in two large-scale studies of electronic voting machine systems, and helped to disclose architectural vulnerabilities in deployed U.S. election systems. His current research examines the methods used by many nation-states to restrict access to information online, and investigates new censorship-resistance technologies aimed at evading them. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, and served as co-editor-in-chief of the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies and associate chair of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.