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Linguistics Professor to Receive Jefferson AwardBy Amber Lester Kennedy Thursday, January 19, 2012 Colleagues can’t help but gush over Associate English professor Ann Reed, who will receive The College of William and Mary’s Jefferson Award on Feb. 3. In their nominations, fellow professors spoke of Reed’s oversight and maintenance of the university’s Linguistics program, which Anthropology Department Chair Kathleen Bragdon said Reed built into “one of the most highly thought-of” in the country. The Jefferson Award is given annually to a member of the college for significant service through personal activities, influence and leadership. Reed, who joined the faculty in 1976, is the first English professor since Jack Willis in 1997 to win the Jefferson in its 49-year history. “I cannot think, quite frankly, of another colleague in Arts and Sciences who has played such a major role in shaping the individual lives of students and in affecting and changing the daily workings of the college over the past three-and-a-half decades – and with such grace, modesty, integrity and selfless labor year in and year out,” said Susan Donaldson, chair of the English department. She was the first woman to chair the English Department, and as such, led the drive to reduce class sizes from 40 students to 30 students. She started an internal junior-leave program for tenure-track faculty, giving them one semester of leave to pursue their publishing requirement. She played a major role in establishing the Williamsburg Child Care Center, which started in 1981 and really got underway in 1992, with help from a $400,000 grant made in 1990 by Sarah Ives Gore, class of 1956. She will retire at the end of the academic year. “Ann Reed has been a scientist working in the humanities, a woman working in what initially was a wholly male discipline and an overwhelmingly male faculty, a quiet inspiration to students in a world that more often harasses, batters and shouts at them, and an example to the whole W&M community of intellectual commitment, professional dignity, personal compassion and scientific optimism,” said Talbot Tyler, Cooley professor of English and Linguistics. |
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