Letters and Science honors five academic staff

Five members of the College of Letters and Science academic staff at the UW–Madison received career achievement awards at an April 24 reception and ceremony.

Dean Phillip R. Certain presented the awards, which are the first to be made under a new Letters and Science annual program.

• Early Career Award: Grace Krewson is the academic adviser for some 700 majors in the Department of English and a member of several college and campus committees. Since she joined the department five years ago, Krewson has built a sense of community among major while helping individual students to meet the requirements for the major. One student writes, “I owe my ability to graduate in May to your dedication. Realizing that you display the same dedication to each of your students also makes me realize how well you do your job. What it comes down to is that I’m lucky to be an English major.”
• Mid-Career Awards: Timothy “Bruno” Browning is associate director of Letters and Science Learning Support Services. He is known as a rare individual who can work with people at all levels of technological skill. He is a highly regarded innovator, and early on recognized the importance of the Web and the promise of MP3 files for language education and in the process, “he has dragged us into the world of 21st century technology, and has done it with infinite patience.” As one colleague writes, “He is intelligent, hard-working, creative and dedicated. He does his job not for personal aggrandizement but to make the institution work.”
• Anthony Jacob, is the associate director of the Chemistry Learning Center, a member of the UW–Madison Teaching Academy, and the coordinator of the Summer Enrichment Program for middle school students of color. Jacob piloted the now-established Peer Mentor Tutor Program which pairs talented undergraduates with students who are at risk for dropping or failing their chemistry course. John Wright, chair of the Department of Chemistry, writes that Jacob “has been a remarkably effective educator and leader. He has touched individuals directly through the mentoring programs and indirectly through his contributions and leadership in the larger educational structures.”
• Jack Solock is senior special librarian with the Center for Demography and Ecology and the center for Demography of Health and Aging, where he has adopted a “missionary zeal” in spreading the word about data availability and potential uses. He has developed a notification system to provide researchers with daily and weekly news updates on current resources in Aging Research, overcoming skepticism that this could be done at a low costs and securing over 900 subscribers for the service. He also has helped the centers to meet the challenges of the Information Age by finding ways to accurately convert stored data from old to new formats, and developing ways to efficiently access the large amounts of data available through the Internet.
• Distinguished Service Award: Judith S. Craig, associate dean emerita, retired on Dec. 31, after 25 years with the college. During that time, she was a strong leader within Letters and Science and the UW–Madison in a wide range of areas including facilities planning and management, academic staff governance, TA bargaining, TA training, and college relations. In supporting her nomination, colleagues note that “Judy’s influence on the college and the campus has been multifaceted. Some if it, like the construction brought about by her work on L&S facilities, is obvious. Much of it, is less obvious but, in the longer term, perhaps more profound. In short, we think that ‘Judy Craig’ is something of a synonym for ‘distinguished service.'” At the recommendation of the L&S Academic Staff Professional Development Committee, the award has been renamed the “Judith S. Craig Distinguished Service Award.”