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Extension's Best

Academic and Teaching Prizes Presented in the Degree Programs
for Outstanding Character and Dedication to Learning

One of the highlights of the Degree Awarding Ceremony each June is the announcement by Dean Michael Shinagel of the recipients of the three major academic prizes--the Phelps, Crite, and Small Prizes--as well as the Dean's Prize for Outstanding Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) Thesis, the Aurelio Prize, the Bok Prize, and the Wood Prize.

The Reginald H. Phelps Prize Fund was established by Edgar Grossman, ABE '66, founder and first president of the Harvard Extension Alumni Association (HEAA) and the first Extension representative to the Associated Harvard Alumni. The prizes are awarded annually on the basis of "academic achievement and character" to outstanding Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB) recipients in honor of Dr. Reginald H. Phelps, AB '30, AM '33, PhD '47, and Director of Harvard University Extension from 1949 to 1975.

Andrea Bartosiewicz, ALB cum laude, graduated at the top of her class with a 3.93 grade point average. Since the spring of 1997, she attended Harvard Extension as a full-time student, working part-time and traveling to campus each week from her home on Cape Cod. Her first course, in 1996, was in American literature, and since then she has taken 11 more courses in that field at the Harvard Extension School, Harvard Summer School, and Harvard College. She plans to pursue a career in secondary school education, teaching literature.

Natalie Christina Edgeworth, ALB cum laude, graduated with a 3.90, the second highest grade point average in her class. Born in Canada, she took courses at Fanshawe College in Ontario before marrying and moving to the United States in 1990. She completed her first Harvard Extension course in 1997, and attended on a more than full-time basis, taking five courses each semester. Last year she traveled each week to Cambridge from New York City, where she lives with her husband, a Harvard Business School graduate. She plans to apply to NYU's graduate program in the psychology of parenthood.

Corrine Lynn Hyzny, ALB cum laude, began college 17 years ago in her home state of California, but her education was interrupted by a successful career in advertising and public relations. Over the last two years, Ms. Hyzny started her own marketing business, became a mother for the second time, and attended Harvard Extension School full-time. She graduated with a 3.87, the third highest grade point average in her class.

The Harvard Extension School and the Harvard Extension Alumni Association established the Annamae and Allan R. Crite Prize in honor of the Crite family. Annamae Crite faithfully attended Extension courses for more than one-half century, and her son, Allan R. Crite, ABE '68, is widely recognized as the dean of African-American artists in the Greater Boston area. These prizes are awarded to Extension School undergraduate or graduate degree recipients who demonstrate "singular dedication to learning and the arts."

Cornelius Lansing Fair, ALM in Classical Civilizations, received the first Crite Prize. A graduate of Harvard College (AB '58) and the Harvard Business School (MBA '62), Fair is a retired architect and urban planner. His thesis, "Terminology for Experiential Site Description: The Case of Classical Delphi," proposes a new descriptive vocabulary for the architectural and site-planning devices found at ancient ceremonial sites that were designed to heighten the emotional experience of both ancient and modern visitors as they progressed through a series of visual and spatial transitions. His thesis director, Irene J. Winter, William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts, said of Fair's work: "I believe he is really on to something important in his insistence that archaeologists can do a great deal more than is traditionally attempted toward the recovery of ancient experience. ...The schema he has outlined can be applied fruitfully to sites in areas and cultures other than classical Greece, and I shall encourage him to publish his results so that they might be widely disseminated."

Susan Marie Morrison, ALM in English and American Literature and Language, received the second Crite Prize. A 1984 graduate in fine arts from Plymouth State College, she is employed as a paralegal. In one of the most ambitious theses of the year, titled "Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Word-Painting in the Short Story Collections of Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce," Morrison examines the ways in which these writers adapted various techniques associated with the painting styles of Mary Cassatt, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Edgar Degas to the medium of language, thus enabling the writers to develop a compact and highly expressive mode of description ideally suited to the limits of the short story. Her thesis director, Judith Ryan, Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature, stated: "Her emphasis is on color, brush-strokes, use of light, angle of vision...rather than on more superficial similarities between objects. This procedure leads to some unexpected and thought-provoking juxtapositions. In almost all respects, this is a remarkable piece of work."

Born in Lithuania, Thomas Small came to the United States in 1900 and earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Boston University in 1918. He retired in 1965 and that year enrolled at the Harvard Extension School. In 1983, at age 89, he received his Master of Liberal Arts degree, thereby becoming the oldest graduate degree recipient in the history of Harvard University. The Thomas Small Prize was established by his family and friends to honor this singular achievement. These prizes are awarded annually on the basis of "academic achievement and character" to two outstanding ALM degree recipients.

Tied for the Thomas Small Prize are Norine Duncan and Michèle Mondini, each with a grade-point average of 3.97. Norine Duncan, ALM in Fine Arts, holds an AB from Brown University ('71) and an MLS from the University of Rhode Island ('77). She is a librarian in the Art Slide Library at Brown. Her ALM thesis, hailed by David Gordon Mitten, James Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology, as "one of the two or three best ALM theses that I have yet read--a work of true and rare distinction," is titled "Funerary Stelai of Attica: The Case for Sumptuary Legislation at the End of the Archaic Period" and examines the vexing question of why grave monuments with figural reliefs disappeared from Athens between ca. 480 and 430 BCE.

Michèle Mondini, ALM in Linguistics, is a 1994 graduate of The American University in Washington, DC, and is employed in the Widener Library Office of Human Resources at Harvard. Her thesis, "Does Spanglish Have an Identifiably Distinct Psycholinguistic Basis?" investigates "Spanglish" as a language-mixing phenomenon occurring among the Hispanic population in the US that results from Spanish and English coming into contact with each other. Her thesis director, Wilga Rivers, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Emerita, stated that the study "was well conducted and lucidly presented and should be useful for further linguistic and psycholinguistic studies of this widely used phenomenon." Mondini has been admitted to the PhD program in psychology at Northeastern University.

The Dean's Prize for Outstanding ALM Thesis recognizes the work that embodies the highest level of imaginative scholarship. This year four prizes, one in each of the disciplines, were awarded.

The Dean's Prize for the outstanding ALM thesis in the behavioral sciences was awarded to Franz Schneider for his work "Genetics and Schizophrenia." This extensive review of the current state of research on schizophrenia tackles the age-old nature/nurture question, and finds current genetic explanations lacking. Mr. Schneider received his AB degree in history from Harvard College in 1969 and his MPA in Environment and Natural Resources from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 1995.

The Dean's Prize for the outstanding ALM thesis in the biological sciences was awarded to Genevieve S. Arnold for her work on "The Use of cDNA Microarray Technology as a Tool of Gene Discovery in the Developing Pancreas." This novel study successfully applied cDNA microarray technology to obtain mRNA expression profiles that enabled the identification of preferentially expressed candidate regulatory genes thought to be critical in pancreas development. Professor Joel Habener, her thesis director, wrote of her research: "Dr. [sic] Arnold has performed to an outstanding level of achievement" and that her thesis "provides new potential insight to the pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus."

The Dean's Prize for the outstanding thesis in the humanities goes to Katherine L. Rogers-Carpenter, a 1986 graduate of the University of Kentucky and a computer graphic artist by profession. Her thesis, "Documenting an Imaginary Past: Fictional Photographs in Three Southern Novels," examines the presence and significance of real and metaphorical "snapshots" in works by Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Hamilton Basso, concluding that these emblems of the past come to embody the Southern myth of dispossession. Richard Marius, Senior Lecturer on English, directed the work and praised it as a "brilliant thesis on an original topic that has in the past been only briefly explored."

Christopher J. Harris was the recipient of the Dean's Prize for the outstanding thesis in the social sciences. Mr. Harris's thesis, "A Study in Influence: Edwin Atkins and the Evolution of American Cuban Policy, 1894-1902," analyzes the diplomatic activity of an American landowner in Cuba in regard to Spanish-American relations over the island. The thesis director, Professor John Womack, Jr., wrote that Harris "has the makings for an excellent dissertation, and the basis for a significant book, not only about the [Spanish-American] War, but about the larger subject of how American foreign policy...was formed in the period before World War I."

Probably the most unusual prize awarded annually at the degree ceremony is the Santo J. Aurelio Prize, named for Santo Joseph Aurelio, ALB '83, ALM '85. Mr. Aurelio received his first two degrees at the Harvard Extension School after age 50 and went on to earn a doctorate and enter a new profession, college teaching, after a career of more than 35 years as an official court reporter for the Massachusetts Superior Court. The prize recognizes academic achievement and character for undergraduate degree recipients more than 50 years of age.

This year's recipient, Robert J. Matthews, AA '99, was awarded a Ford Foundation Scholarship to pursue ballet after high school; however, he was almost immediately drafted and found himself in Vietnam instead of on stage. Mr. Matthews had several different careers after his return but found he was most rewarded by his work with friends who were AIDS patients. In 1992 he decided to become a home hospice clinician, working with the blind and AIDS and cancer patients; he began taking courses at the Harvard Extension School shortly thereafter. Graduating at age 53 with his Associate in Arts in Extension Studies and a GPA of 3.95, Mr. Matthews intends to continue at Harvard Extension and complete his Bachelor of Liberal Arts.

The Derek Bok Public Service Prize honors the commitment of former Harvard President Derek Bok to adult continuing education and to effective advocacy of community service activities. It is awarded annually to degree recipients at the Harvard Extension School who, while pursuing academic studies and professional careers, also give generously of their time and skills to improve the quality of life for others in the larger community. The prizes were established by generous gifts from the Harvard Extension Alumni Association.

Jayne Elizabeth Habe Lacey, ALB cum laude, received this award because of her lifelong record of community service. Over the last few decades, she has been deeply involved in a variety of programs that help children, especially those with special needs or who are in need of adult guidance, those who are hospitalized or sexually abused, and runaway teens. A Big Sister, a counselor, a foster parent, an activist, and almost always an unpaid volunteer--Ms. Lacey has served children and children's support groups in these and many other capacities.

The Judith Wood Memorial Prize honors students who, while completing degrees or certificates at the Harvard Extension School, must also contend with disabilities of a serious nature. Awarded from the income from a fund established by the family and friends of the late Judith Wood who, though born with cystic fibrosis, beset with diabetes and blindness, took Extension School courses as long as she was able, and inspired many other students with her courage and fortitude.

Peter Alan Smith, this year's recipient of the Judith Wood Memorial Prize, demonstrated outstanding scholarship, leadership, and enterprise. A Master of Liberal Arts candidate who is blind, Mr. Smith uses adaptive equipment for the classroom and at John Hancock Insurance Company, where he is employed.

This year the Extension School's Commencement Speaker Prize went to Theresa Rose Souliotis, ALB '99. The title of her speech was "Finding the Opportunities in the Obstacles." She addressed her fellow students at the Extension School's Degree Awarding Ceremony.

Established in 1990 by the family and friends of Carmen S. Bonanno, who studied a foreign language in the Harvard Extension School many years ago, this award recognizes excellence in foreign language instruction. This year's recipient of the Carmen S. Bonanno Excellence in Foreign Language Teaching Award was Dr. Raymond D. Lum, Asian Bibliographer, Harvard College Library, who has been teaching elementary Chinese at the Extension School for more than 20 years. "He is truly a teacher to be emulated, one of the gems that makes the Extension School so valuable," wrote one of several students who nominated him.

The Petra T. Shattuck Excellence in Teaching Award was established by the Harvard Extension School in memory of Dr. Petra T. Shattuck, a distinguished and dedicated teacher in the program, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage in the spring of 1988. These prizes are awarded annually to honor outstanding teaching in the Extension program. This year, the two recipients were Jay Harris and Theoharis C. Theoharis.

Jay Harris, the Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies, has taught at the Extension School for ten years. His courses Introduction to the Classics of Western Thought I and II, Introduction to Judaism, and Jewish Life in Eastern Europe have earned him consistently high scores on student evaluations: 4.9s on a scale of 1 to 5. One student commented that Professor Harris's courses were so exceptional they should be mandatory for all Extension students.

Theoharis C. Theoharis is the editor of the Boston Book Review and has been teaching in the Extension School since 1996 and in the Summer School since 1986. In nominating him for the Shattuck Prize, a student in his literature course, Saving the Soul: Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, wrote, "He showed so many facets of each work that it seemed like he was teaching four classes: comparative literature, theology, psychology, and history."

Jennifer Klein Morrison and Lisa A. Ratmansky were the recipients of the James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award, which was established in 1991. In 1997 Dr. Morrison and Ms. Ratmansky developed Introduction to Academic Writing and Critical Thinking, a course required for admission to the undergraduate degree program at the Extension School. Dr. Morrison is co-chair of the English Department at Regis College; Ms. Ratmansky is a preceptor in expository writing at Harvard College. Students consistently praise both instructors for making this required course enjoyable and intellectually challenging. Dr. Morrison's students call her lectures "insightful," "rigorous," "thought-provoking," and "engaging"; one of Ms. Ratmansky's students commented, "The class was thrilling--hard, but thrilling."

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