The first half of November brings exciting honors and funding awards for UT staff and students: Law Professor Selected as Chancellor’s Professor; UTIA Associate Professor Wins C-FARE Early Career Award; UTIA Faculty Dissertation Awarded with Prestigious International Prize; EEB Professor Selected for NSF Grant, Five Women Take Home Top Honors in 2021 Advocates’ Prize Competition; UT Extension Financial Specialist Receives National Excellence in Extension Award.
Penny White earns UT Chancellor’s Professor designation
The College of Law’s Professor Penny White has been selected as one of the University of Tennessee’s Chancellor’s Professors. With her selection, White joins a group of the university’s most exceptional scholars. The designation is a lifetime honor that recognizes extraordinary scholarly achievement in an individual discipline or field as well as a record of excellence in teaching and service to the university.
UTIA Associate Professor Wins C-FARE Early Career Award
Aaron Smith, an associate professor and crop marketing specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, has received the Early Career Contributions to Public Policy Award by the Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics. The award specifically honors early-career food, agricultural and resource economists who generate science-based, policy-relevant knowledge and who actively seek to make that knowledge available in a form accessible to U.S. public policy decision-makers at the federal, state and local levels.
UTIA Faculty Dissertation Awarded with Prestigious International Prize
Hao Gan, an assistant professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, has been awarded the 2020 Giuseppe Pellizzi Prize for his Ph.D. work in the areas of specialty fruit crops and yield mapping. The work was conducted at the University of Florida under the direction of Wonsuk “Daniel” Lee, a professor specializing in precision agriculture. Gan was chosen as the first-place winner among three other award winners who hail from the U.S., Germany and India.
EEB Professor Gaoue Selected for NSF Grant to Lead Long-term Research Abroad Program to Benin
Orou Gaoue, associate professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, was recently awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his research into the human impacts on the mutualistic relationship between between African mahogany trees and the weaver ants that occupy their leaves. Gaoue began noticing this phenomenon and its intersection with local ecological knowledge during his research trips to Benin, where he was born and raised.
Five Women Take Home Top Honors in 2021 Advocates’ Prize Competition
Two students came away victorious from the College of Law’s 2021 Advocates’ Prize Moot Court Competition. Judges named Molly Green-Majewski and Holly Nehls, both second-year law students, as the best team, while Anne Crisp, a third-year law student, was selected as the winner of the Powell Prize for the best oralist. Crisp also authored the competition’s best brief while Peyton Faulkner-Ritchie and Kay Frazier, both second-year students, earned recognition for the second-best brief.
UT Extension Financial Specialist Receives National Excellence in Extension Award
Ann Allgood Berry, a professor with University of Tennessee Extension Family and Consumer Sciences, has received the 15th Annual Excellence in Extension Award from the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP). Berry’s expertise in identifying financial education needs has been instrumental in delivering timely information to a vast number of Tennesseans over the years. The National Excellence in Extension Award is given annually to one Cooperative Extension professional who excels at programming, provides visionary leadership and makes a positive impact on those they serve.