Franklin College of Arts and Sciences faculty and students are receiving top UGA awards during Honors Week. Since the 1930s, UGA has celebrated the accomplishments of its students and faculty with a dedicated week each spring semester. This year’s honorees exemplify the Franklin Spark, the characteristics that define faculty, students, and alumni at the intersection of the arts and sciences: ambitious, curious, creative, innovative, and tomorrow’s leaders. 

Moon Jung Jang, associate professor in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, received a Meigs Teaching Professorship, UGA’s highest recognition for instruction. Jang’s teaching incorporates the aims of her research and design practice. She’s built a design curriculum for graphic design education for students to learn core design concepts and processes, experience real-world design practices, and explore multidisciplinary research. “Through her design thinking and instruction, Moon engages students in exercises that prepare their minds for challenges beyond college,” said one student. “She teaches the visual narrative and design systems that are foundational to strong graphic communication while bringing research, technology, and guest speakers to foster innovative ideas in her design lab.” Read more about Jang. 

Ingie Hovland, assistant professor of religion, Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, received a Russell Undergraduate Teaching Award for outstanding teaching by faculty early in their careers. Hovland uses a multi-step method to build her students’ complex thinking and leadership skills. She regularly asks her students to “make a map” of their readings to help them visualize the content and she begins classes by having students converse about their readings. Those conversations lead to class-wide participatory learning activities. All of this culminates in a final project that calls on students to ask deeper questions, understand different perspectives, and think about complex human situations. Read more about Hovland.

Marshall Shepherd, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the UGA Atmospheric Sciences Program, was named a Regents’ Professor, the highest professorial recognition given by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. Shepherd was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineers in 2021. He’s earned numerous recognitions throughout his career, including SEC Professor of the Year in 2022, in addition to serving as president of the American Meteorological Society in 2013. Read more about Shepherd.

Victoria Hasko, associate professor in the departments of Germanic and Slavic studies and of linguistics, received the Richard Reiff Award for Campus Internationalization for exceptional contributions to global education. Hasko has served as the director of UGA’s Russian Flagship Program since fall 2018 and has secured more than $7 million in federal funding for global educational initiatives from multiple agencies. The program supports more than 90 undergraduates currently pursuing professional-level proficiency in Russian. Read more about Hasko.

The Distinguished Research Professor title honors senior faculty members who are recognized for their innovative body of work and its impact on their field of research. The Franklin awardees are: 

• David Gay, professor in the department of mathematics, is a renowned mathematician whose research has transformed understanding of the structure of complicated geometric spaces. Gay is best known for introducing “trisections,” a powerful new framework that provides a systematic way to decompose four-dimensional spaces into three interacting components. Read more about Gay.
• Robert Schmitz, professor in the department of genetics, is a leader in plant epigenomics, developing genome-wide approaches to understand how chemical modifications to DNA shape gene regulation. Read more about Schmitz.

The Creative Research Medals recognize an exceptional research or creative project performed by a mid-career faculty member. The Franklin awardees are: 

• Sharina Maíllo-Pozo, associate professor in the department of romance languages, was honored for Bridging Sonic Borders: Popular Music in Contemporary Dominican/Dominicanyork Literature, an ambitious multidisciplinary research project that redefines Dominican and Latinx cultural studies. Introducing the groundbreaking concept of “sonic literary texts,” she explores novels, poetry, music, and performance that respond to political repression, migration, and the complexities of transnational life. Read more about Maillo-Pozo.
• Amanda Spivak, professor in the department of marine sciences, has advanced scientific understanding of estuaries and wetlands and how disturbances like nutrient pollution, sea-level rise, and land-use change affect coastal resilience. Her multidisciplinary research combines ecosystem ecology with novel biogeochemical approaches to describe how molecular-scale processes can affect entire landscapes, yielding new insights into how natural or restored coastal environments change over time. Read more about Spivak.

Creative Research Awards 
These awards recognize established faculty whose overall scholarly body of work has had a major impact on the field of study and has established the investigator’s international reputation as a leader in the field. 

• Albert Christ-Janer Creative Research Award Creative Research Award: Jennifer Palmer, associate professor in the department of history, is an internationally recognized historian whose scholarship reshapes understanding of race, gender and slavery in the French Atlantic world. Palmer’s research integrates legal, social and cultural history to examine how colonial subjects — particularly women and people of African descent — navigated family, property and power across France and its Caribbean empire. Read more about Palmer.

Early Career Scholar Awards

These awards recognize junior faculty whose research, creative, and scholarly achievements indicate a trajectory toward an exceptional, sustained research career and an imminent rise to international stature in their field of study.

• Michael F. Adams ECS Award: Alexander Fyfe, assistant professor in the department of comparative literature and intercultural studies and the African Studies Institute, is recognized for his soon-to-publish book, “Writing the Noncolonial Self: Modern African Literatures and the Politics of Subjectivity” (University of Virginia Press, May 2026), a major contribution to African literary studies and postcolonial theory. Read more about Fyfe.
• Fred C. Davison ECS Award: Cassandra Hall, assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy, is an emerging leader in computational astrophysics whose research bridges planet formation, astrobiology, and artificial intelligence. Her work focuses on understanding how planets form within young circumstellar disks, particularly through gravitational instability. Read more about Hall.

Research Communications Award: Holly Bik, associate professor in the department of marine sciences, is a nationally recognized scientist-communicator whose work sets a high standard for research communication and public engagement. A marine biologist and bioinformatician, Bik studies the diversity and evolution of nematodes - microscopic worms that play essential roles in ocean ecosystems - and has developed innovative ways to make this complex research accessible to broad audiences. Read more about Bik.

Service-Learning Excellence Awards recognize faculty for outstanding service-learning instruction and advancing service-learning scholarship. The Franklin awardees are: 

• Emily Sahakian, associate professor with the departments of theatre and film and romance languages, conducts research on the role theatre can play in connecting with communities, addressing complex history, and solving present-day problems. Read more about Sahakian. Read more about Sahakian.
• Anna Rogers, senior lecturer and undergraduate coordinator in the department of sociology, inspires her students to challenge criminal justice stereotypes surrounding both infamous and unfamiliar court cases in her media and criminal justice course. Read more about Rogers.

The Sandy Beaver Teaching Professorship is a two-year appointment for tenured faculty focused on active teaching advocacy and leadership. This year's teaching professorship went to Timothy Gupton, professor of Spanish linguistics. Gupton, who was promoted to professor in 2024, studies syntax as a way to determine how Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese language structure is represented within the mind. Read more about Gupton.

The Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Awards annually honor outstanding faculty in Franklin who have shown a sustained commitment to high-quality instruction. Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award recipients are:

• Sarangan Balasubramaniam, Statistics
• Trina Cyterski, Psychology
• Jonathan Dees, Biological Sciences
• Catherine Edwards, Marine Sciences
• Rob Nichols, Cellular Biology
• Jason Roberts, Religion
• Roberta Salmi, Anthropology
• Alexandra Shapiro, Germanic & Slavis Studies
• Catherine Simpson, Romance Languages
• Kaixiong Ye, Genetics

The Franklin College Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award was established by Ted and Caroline Ridlehuber, two devoted alumni, to recognize each year a faculty member who has made a life-changing impact on students through sustained commitment to high-quality undergraduate instruction. This year’s recipients are:  

• Courtney McDaniel, Cellular Biology
• Bobby Jo Otto, Sociology

Congratulations to all Franklin faculty who are receiving awards for their commitment to helping UGA fulfill its mission through their unyielding pursuit of excellence. Read more about Honors Week activities.