Three faculty members will be honored during Commencement weekend by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for guiding, encouraging and inspiring their students through the long and difficult process of completing a Ph.D.
The winners of this year's Graduate Mentor Awards are Menachem Elimelech, the Llewellyn West Jones Professor of Environmental Engineering and director of the Environmental Engineering Program; Pericles Lewis, associate professor of English and Comparative Literature; and Geoffrey Cohen, assistant professor of psychology.
The three honorees, who were elected by a committee of students and faculty of the Graduate School, will receive their awards during the school's Commencement Convocation on Sunday, May 23. At that time, the Graduate School will present Wilbur Cross Medals to several distinguished alumni. (See related story, above.)
"Developing this prize has been one of the most rewarding activities in the last few years," says Graduate School Dean Peter Salovey. "Initially suggested by the Graduate Student Assembly, the prize evolved as a dynamic collaboration among the assembly, my office and the Graduate Teaching Center." This year, the award selection committee received more than 100 nomination letters from graduate students, recommending 46 different members of the graduate faculty. All letters nominating advisers for the award are anonymous.
Earning a Ph.D. involves doing original scientific or scholarly research. Doctoral candidates work closely with their advisers and, in the process, evolve from students into colleagues.
"Graduate school is an exciting intellectual adventure, but the actual work of writing a dissertation can be lonely and stressful, especially since you are writing a major work over a very long time-span for a very small audience," Lewis says. "An adviser can help students realize their potential by assuring them that they have at least one reader who takes their ideas seriously. Ideally, a mentor should help students maintain a sense of perspective and of their connection to a wider intellectual community."
Lewis is an expert on modernism, the history of the novel, and 20th-century literary theory. He also teaches courses on the epic tradition, the history of English poetry, and literature and philosophy. He is the author of "Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel," which won the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for outstanding scholarly work by a junior faculty member in the humanities at Yale.
According to one student, "Professor Lewis invested countless hours of his time into discussing my project with me and helping me shape it into a prospectus that not only has clear connection to cutting-edge research in my field, but also perfectly captures the ideas that had sparked my interest in the first place. He gave me a sense of place as a scholar, a researcher, a teacher and ultimately also as a person that I sorely lacked last year. ... Professor Lewis is one of the kindest, most upstanding and sympathetic people I have ever met in my life. He continues to be an inspiration and role model to me, both as an academic and as an individual."
Elimelech's research centers on problems involving physicochemical, colloidal and microbial processes in natural and engineered environmental systems. His honors include the W.M. Keck Foundation's Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers' Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 1996, and the 2002 Best Paper Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors.
One student praised Elimelech's guidance by saying, "The personal and professional development of the graduate students under his guidance is remarkable, and can be directly attributed to his unique mentoring style. He is as kind as he is firm, caring as he is demanding, and above all, leads by example."
Another wrote, "As an instructor, Professor Elimelech is by far the best that I have had in my graduate student career. He has a talent for making the fundamentals of environmental engineering 'come alive' to his students."
Of his interactions with his students, Elimelech says. "Teaching and student mentoring is the most rewarding aspect of my academic career. Daily interactions with my students in the classroom and research environment have given me ample opportunities to affirm the truth of the quote from the Talmud: 'Much have I learned from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from my students.'"
Cohen conducts research into aspects of social psychology. One of his current projects looks at the racial achievement gap in school -- particularly how negative stereotyping and the expectation of bias discourages motivation among the targeted students and can lead to mistrust and decreased intellectual achievement. Another project explores the impact of group identity on political decision-making and on resistance to persuasive evidence.
In a letter nominating Cohen for the Mentor Award, one graduate student wrote, "The best way I can think of to sum up Geoffrey Cohen is that he is the living embodiment of his research. Geoff's main focus as a researcher is on mentorship, in particular, the ways a mentor can build a trusting and supportive relationship, provide effective feedback, and in general nurture the interests, abilities and motivations of his students. As a mentor, he lives by the principles he studies."
Another student said, "In addition to teaching me to write and think at a new level, Geoff demonstrated an amazing concern and respect for my ideas."
Cohen says of his students, "I feel very lucky to have been able to work with an exciting group of students who have enriched my thinking in social psychology. My primary role as a mentor is to be an engaged colleague. For me, this involves trying to appreciate students' ideas and interests and to draw out what's original and exciting in them. It also involves helping students not only to develop their ideas but also to link them to important social problems and big-picture theoretical issues. Research is naturally a lot of fun, and my main objective is not to spoil it."
T H I S
Pericles Lewis
Menachem Elimelech
Geoffrey Cohen
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