Degree Prize Recipients

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 Bok Prize, the Aurelio Prize, and the Wood Prize.

The Reginald H. Phelps Prize Fund was established by the late Edgar Grossman, ABE '66, founder and first president of the Harvard Extension Alumni Association, and the first Extension representative to the Associated Harvard Alumni. The prizes honor Dr. Reginald H. Phelps, AB '30, AM '33, PhD '47, Director of University Extension at Harvard from 1949 to 1975, and are awarded annually on the basis of "academic achievement and character" to outstanding students receiving bachelor's degrees in extension studies.

The first prize recipient is Nova Ann Najarian, ALB '03, cum laude. A natural sciences concentrator, Najarian is graduating at the top of her class with a 3.96 GPA. She began her undergraduate academic career 14 years ago at Smith College and currently works as a clinical researcher at Indevus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Najarian plans to continue her education to earn a master's degree in nursing or biology.

Asako N. Severn, ALB '03, cum laude, is the recipient of the second Phelps Prize, graduating with the second highest GPA of 3.92. Severn holds an associate's degree from Japan and began her undergraduate academic career at the Harvard Extension School in 1995. A linguistics concentrator, Severn completed courses in neurolinguistics and phonological theory through Harvard's GSAS as a Special Student and plans to pursue an advanced degree in cognitive neuropsychology.

There is a tie for the third place Phelps Prize. Ann Marie Murphy, ALB '03, cum laude, is a social science concentrator who began her undergraduate career at Northeastern University 37 years ago. Murphy is the Deputy Director of Operations and Information Services for Alumni Affairs and Development at Harvard.

Johanna Leslie Wilbur, ALB '03, cum laude, a Harvard employee in the Slavic Department, shares the third place Phelps Prize. In addition to her numerous courses at the Extension School, Wilbur, a Russian studies concentrator (and a single mother), completed four Russian language and literature courses through the GSAS as a Special Student. She plans on applying to the graduate program in Slavic languages and literature studies at Harvard and pursuing a career in teaching.

The Harvard Extension School and the Harvard Extension Alumni Association established the Annamae and Allan R. Crite Prize in honor of the Crite family, whose long association with the Extension School began shortly after its founding, when Annamae Crite started taking courses. Mrs. Crite regularly attended courses for more than 50 years, and encouraged her son to pursue studies at the Extension School. 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."

The first Crite Prize goes to Virginia Ogozalek, concentrator in studio arts and film, whose thesis is titled, "Pop Goes the Electric Chair: Interpreting an American Icon from Warhol to the Web." A masterful and at times disturbing study of the iconographic significance of the electric chair in American culture and art, Ogozalek argues that Warhol's repeated transformations of the silk-screened, colored electric chairs represent an intriguing intersection between the chair as a realistic instrument of death and the chair as mere simulacrum, neutralized and made even humorous in contexts such as children's cartoons. According to her thesis director, John Stilgoe, Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape Development, "This especially powerful thesis derives from a stunning amount of background research and from the most sophisticated analysis of theoretical material I have encountered in several years. She covers not only the general understanding of death in American culture and the legal ramifications of punitive death, . . . she makes clear how the electric chair has become the generator of imaginative imagery. It is perhaps the first of a new genre of theses involving the aesthetic reconstruction of technology-based reality, a sort of tracking of re-invention." Ogozalek holds a BA degree in psychology from Colby College, an MSEd from the University of Southern Maine, and a PhD from Northeastern University. She is a professor of computer science at Worcester State College.

The second Crite Prize is awarded to Natasha Bershadsky, concentrator in classical civilizations. Her thesis is titled "A Comparison of Shields in Early Greek Art and Literature" and was co-directed by Gloria Ferrari Pinney, Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art, and David Gordon Mitten, Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology. The thesis explores the relationship between word and image, specifically the terms for "shield" in Homeric epic and the different shapes that shields assume in geometric and archaic art. Professor Pinney wrote, "The first part of the paper contains a brilliant analysis of the uses of the words aspis and sakos in the epic poems, relying on the Jakob-sonian concept of markedness. The conclusion, clearly and convincingly argued, is that sakos is the marked term, which carries the idea of invincibility, while aspis may be used of the loser in battle or in a broad, unmarked sense." Professor Mitten likewise stated, "Ms. Bershadsky has accomplished something quite exceptional in this thesis . . . and could well turn it into an important article." Bershadsky holds two BA degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in psychology and linguistics (1999), and is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago.

Born in the late nineteenth century in Lithuania, Thomas Small--in whose name the Thomas Small Prize is presented annually--moved to the United States in 1900. By 1918, he had graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree. After graduation, he entered the working world and continued working in business until his retirement in 1965. In that same year, he began taking Extension School courses. The culmination of his studies was his graduation in 1983, at age 89, with a master's degree, making him the oldest earned graduate degree recipient ever to graduate from Harvard University. His family and friends honored him by establishing this prize in his name. It is awarded annually on the basis of "academic achievement and character" to outstanding ALM recipients.

Based on her exceptional academic record, with a final GPA of 4.0, Laurie Wilczynski-Zollo is awarded the Thomas Small prize. She is an anthropology concentrator who has been working as an obstetrical and maternity nurse since 1994. She recently moved to San Francisco, where she completed her master's thesis, studying ancient Greek cult heroization. In the thesis, she compared the rituals, memorials, and testimonials associated with women who died during childbirth to those of the men killed in battle, persuasively arguing that the men and women obtained similar status through untimely death. Her thesis director Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature, wrote, " . . . your perspective on the human condition, focusing on the experiences of childbirth and war as poeticized through heroic figures and reflected in fragmentary evidence about real people, is very incisive and compelling. . . . I am happy and honored to have been involved in your fine accomplishment."

The Dean's Prize for Outstanding ALM Thesis recognizes the work that embodies the highest level of scholarship. A prize is awarded in each of the four disciplines of the Extension School's ALM Program. An award is also presented for the best thesis project in the ALM in Information Technology.

The Dean's Prize for Outstanding ALM Thesis in the behavioral sciences is awarded to Jennifer Wolfeld for her thesis titled "Non-Native Speaker Intelligibility: Does Intonation Practice with Visual Feedback Make a Difference?" As a linguistics concentrator, Jennifer had to teach herself the methods of the behavioral scientist and the statistician to take a behavioral approach to her work. She conducted a randomized control trial in which she compared traditional accent reduction strategies with visual representations of vocal accuracy. Wolfeld was able to articulate a distinction between objective intelligibility and subjective but pragmatic comprehensibility and to clarify the critical role of the listener in the verbal exchange. Wolfeld completed her undergraduate education at California State University-Humbolt in 1974, and her MEd from Stanford University in 1976. In addition to teaching English as a Second Language at Endicott College and in corporate settings, she is a musician who has played the bassoon with the Newton Symphony Orchestra, the Longy Orchestra, and various chamber music groups in the Greater Boston area.

The Dean's Prize for Outstanding ALM Thesis in the social sciences goes to Carla Bosco, graduate in history. Bosco's thesis, titled "Prelude to War: The Harvard Community and Slavery during the Fugitive Slave Era, 1850–1885," explores the Harvard community's attitudes toward slavery during the period immediately following the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act. Drawing extensively on unpublished archival sources, Bosco analyzes how Harvard's conservative stance on slavery embroiled it in a number of controversies and also affected faculty appointments. The thesis director, Peter Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, wrote that her thesis is "excellent . . . both in conception and execution. . . . This is original work of the highest order." Bosco received her BA in English and history from Mount Holyoke College (1993), her MS in library science from Simmons College (1996), and plans to go on for a PhD in American history.

The Dean's prize for Outstanding Thesis in the humanities goes to David Palmieri, concentrator in French language and literature, whose thesis is titled "Chastes Archetypes: la cosmologie poétique d'Oskar Milosz." The study explores the inherent difficulties posed by cosmological poetry, which seeks to unite religion, science, philosophy, and poetry; and the dauntingly complex work of Oskar Milosz, who drew from poetic traditions established by mystical poets such as Dante, Blake, and Yeats, from diverse philosophers and scientists ranging from Plato and Descartes to Spinoza and Einstein, and from several systems of Eastern and Western religious thought in order to create his own vocabulary of archetypes. The thesis director, Samba Diop, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, stated that the work "is a very important contribution toward Miloszian studies" and praised Palmieri for "his excellent mastery of the French language." Palmieri holds a BA from Rutgers in history and an MA from Ohio University in film theory. He is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Montreal. Parts of the thesis have already been accepted for publication in the West Virginia University Philological Papers and in the forthcoming annual review of Les Amis de Milosz in Paris.

The theses of two other humanities graduates have also been cited for excellence: Donald H. Angus' "Bears that Dance and Bears that Don't: Cormac McCarthy's Frontier" (English and American literature and language) and Doria A. P. Hughes's "The Tale of Ker-Is and the Lay of Graelent: Women, Water, and Wickedness in Two Breton Narratives" (Celtic studies).

Angus' thesis examines how the Western novels of Cormac McCarthy interrogate and revise America's frontier mythology. John Stauffer, Associate Professor of English and American Literature and the History of Literature, who served as the director, called the work "a brilliant thesis, without question the best [ALM] thesis I've ever read, and one that, in its close textual readings, deep knowledge of the material, and intertextual analyses, is at the same level of advanced PhD English theses from Harvard. It is definitely publishable. There is such passion in his analysis and elegance in the way he develops his narrative, that the reading has inspired me to teach Blood Meridian." Don Angus is a 1992 graduate of Marietta College and holds the BA degree in English and philosophy. He is a college rowing coach and is in his second year of a JD program at Suffolk Law School.

Hughes's study examines and compares the evolving literary representations of two very different female characters occurring in two Breton narratives associated with the legendary king Gradlon and argues that, despite their differences, they appear to derive from a common Celtic notion. Her thesis director, Patrick K. Ford, Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures, wrote, "This splendid thesis accomplishes three discreet tasks in the process of establishing a unity of theme in the two narratives. . . . Doria has succeeded mightily with a project that I would have warned others away from. Her bibliography and references in her text demonstrate familiarity with current Celtic scholarship that we would expect of the graduate students in our department." Hughes received a BA in 1996 from Oberlin College, with a major in comparative literature and anthropology. She describes herself as a mother and an herbalist.

The Dean's Prize for Outstanding ALM Thesis in the natural sciences is awarded to Richard Macniven for his thesis titled "A Molecular Phylogeny of the Polymmatini (Lepidoptera:Lycaenidae): Testing the Origins of the Neotropical Fauna." Macniven's molecular analysis of these butterflies supports Vladimir Nabokov's hypothesis that the Neotropical Polymmatus Blues originated in Asia, migrated into North America via the Bering Strait and continued into South America during the Great American Interchange three to four million years ago. Naomi E. Pierce, Sidney A. and John H. Hessel Professor of Biology, directed this work and praised it as a "truly magnificent thesis." Macniven earned his bachelor of science degree in biochemistry at Rutgers. He is employed at Biogen.

The Dean's Thesis Prize for the ALM in Information Technology goes to Yuechao Zhao for his thesis project titled "Nonlinear Dimension Reduction for Analysis and Synthesis of Human Face and Facial Expression." Zhao, a full-time research associate with the materials science group at the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, previously earned a PhD in applied physics at the University of Science and Technology in China. According to Dr. Paul Bamberg, Lecturer on Mathematics at Harvard University, who recently read the thesis: "Mr. Zhao has applied sophisticated techniques to a difficult and important problem and explained it extremely well. I have done similar sorts of dimension-reduction problems in speech synthesis and found that many PhDs don't understand the general approach."

The Derek Bok Public Service Prize honors the commitment of former President Derek Bok to adult continuing education and to effective advocacy of community service activities. It is awarded annually to degree and certificate recipients at the Harvard University 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.

A few years ago, when our country was swept with a string of school shootings, Jane Catherine Eppley, ALB '03, herself a high school student at the time, was so concerned by what was happening that she began asking herself, "What can I do to help?" Her answer came a few years later when, in May 2000, Eppley founded and ran a nonprofit organization called Artnotguns, Inc. The organization published a journal composed of literature and art from gun violence survivors and others concerned about gun violence. The goal of the organization and the journal was to provide a forum for individuals to talk about their experiences with gun violence. The journal was published in May 2001 both on the Web at www.artnotguns.org, and in hardcopy. Through this organization Eppley shared with the world the personal life stories that live behind the headlines. Eppley plans to attend graduate school in the field of theology and pursue a career as an episcopal priest or professor of theology.

Elaine Victoria Grey, ALB candidate, is a celebrated Boston artist, whose accomplishments include a one-person exhibit titled Innovations at Harvard University's Baker Library and copyright renderings of historic sites in Boston including the State House and the swan boats. But in addition to her art career, Grey has been an active public servant for decades in her hometown of Watertown, Massachusetts. Her biggest contribution to date is the founding of the Watertown Center for the Arts, currently a children's theater and a nonprofit organization that seeks to build a visual and performing arts facility at the Arsenal on the Charles. Her other public service activities include running for Watertown town councillor in 1995 and 1999, serving as a member of the Watertown Historical Society, chair of the Watertown Arts Lottery Council, and elected town meeting member. As a trustee of the Marshall Home for the Aged she assisted in placing elderly residents in assisted living facilities. She also continues to serve as chair of the Watertown Zoning Board of Appeals and the administrative liaison for Watertown High School Athletic Hall of Fame. Last year the Watertown Public Library named her Watertown Woman of Achievement. Grey plans to continue painting, being active in public service, and pursuing her education at the Harvard Extension School to earn her ALB degree.

Perhaps 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 older than 50 years of age. This year's recipient, Doris Haas Finley, is 59 years old and a humanities concentrator who is graduating with a 3.84 GPA.

Finley was born in Germany and was unable to continue to university studies after graduation from high school in postwar Germany. She pursued her education whenever the opportunity presented itself while raising two sons. Governed by her interests in art and in history, she took a variety of courses in German, British, French, and American universities. In 1998, she and her American husband moved from Germany to Boston. Encouraged by her mother, who offered to finance her long-coveted university degree, she began taking courses at the Extension School almost immediately. Finley plans to combine her love of art and history with her professional expertise in tourism and provide specialized travel events to bring together people on both sides of the Atlantic in a common appreciation of art, history, and culture.

The Judith Wood Memorial Prize--awarded from an income fund established by the family and friends of the late Judith Wood--honors students who take courses at the Extension School while facing the additional challenges of a disability. Judith Wood was born with cystic fibrosis, later developed diabetes, and eventually lost her sight. In spite of her difficulties, she continued to take Extension School courses for as long as she was able to do so. Her courage and fortitude inspired many other students. The 2003 recipient of the Wood Prize is Juan Botero. A candidate for the ALM degree with a concentration in social sciences, Botero is majoring in anthropology and archaeology. A ceremony to present his prize took place during the summer.

This year the Extension School's Commencement Speaker Prize went to Stephen Silver, ALM '03.

Teaching Awards Presented to Extension Faculty

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, 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 three recipients are Donna Cooper, Robert Lue, and Mary-Ann Winkelmes.

This fall is Donna Cooper's tenth year teaching Current Topics in Medicine, a course designed for the patient, not the premedical student. Cooper, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, was nominated for the Shattuck Prize by students who appreciate the insights she provides into the complexities of today's healthcare system as well as the cooperative learning environment that she encourages. One wrote, "In my opinion, every educated person should be taking this course."

Robert Lue, Senior Lecturer on Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, began teaching in the Extension School in 1995 and has developed a loyal following of students who appreciate his enthusiasm, professionalism, and sound career advice. They have enrolled in his lecture course on HIV and AIDS, his seminar on the biology of aging, and his graduate research methods proseminar. His students gave Lue a 4.9 instructor rating this year (on a five-point scale) and many agreed with the person who wrote, "This has been one of my favorite courses at the Extension School--as is any course that Dr. Lue teaches."

Mary-Ann Winkelmes, Lecturer in Extension and Associate Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, also earned 4.9 in her course Religious Art and Architecture in Renaissance Italy this year, although one student wrote in a 6 and described Winkelmes as "off the charts." Students praise her enthusiasm, her expertise, and her accessibility. As another student wrote, "Dr. Winkelmes works extremely hard for her students and it shows. Thank you for all your hard work and effort in helping us to learn."

Established in 1990 by the family of Carmen S. Bonanno, who studied a foreign language at Harvard Extension School many years ago, the Carmen S. Bonanno Excellence in Foreign Language Teaching Award recognizes excellence in foreign language instruction.

This year's Bonanno Prize winner, Wayne Ishikawa, Lecturer in Extension, has been teaching a variety of French language courses, including FREN E-5 French Oral Survival, for the past 26 years. He also teaches in Harvard Summer School, where he was formerly Dean of Students. Ishikawa holds a PhD in romance languages from Harvard University. "Dr. Ishikawa is one of the best teachers I have ever had, certainly the best language teacher," commented one student on this semester's course evaluations.

David Gessner is the recipient of this year's James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award. The author of several important works of creative nonfiction, including Under the Devil's Thumb, Return of the Osprey, and A Wild, Rank Place, Gessner has been teaching creative nonfiction and environmental writing at Harvard Extension for four years. His students consistently praise him for his enthusiasm and expertise, his passion and professionalism. His students awarded him the highest possible scores in his most recent course evaluations. One student seemed to speak for all members of the class when he called the course a "transcendent, remarkable experience."