Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences prides itself on providing a personalized education of distinction to our students by proudly championing the humanistic mission of Chapman University’s founders, which focused on diversity, global citizenship, and social justice. The outstanding faculty in our nine academic departments and interdisciplinary centers support innovative curriculum, research, and public programming to ensure that the arts, humanities, and social sciences remain the distinguishing component in every student’s education. Below is a list of Wilkinson College faculty who are recognized with honors and awards this spring. Congratulations to all our faculty for an amazing academic year!

2021 Valerie Scudder Awards

The Valerie Scudder Award is in recognition of outstanding achievement in teaching, scholarly/creative activity, and service to the university. The recipients for this award are chosen by their peers for their exceptional contributions. The Valerie Scudder Award was the first award of merit to be given to faculty members by the university. It began around 1980, when trustee Valerie Scudder, a returning adult student to Chapman College, approached the administrators with her desire to honor faculty for their excellence.

In addition to a $9,000 honorarium, award winners’ names are placed on a plaque, exhibited in the Doy and Dee Henley Reading Room of the Leatherby Libraries.  This year, Wilkinson College faculty won two of the three Scudder Awards awarded annually.

2021-2022 Unit Faculty Excellence Awards

Unit Faculty Awards are peer recognition of exceptional contributions in the areas of teaching and/or scholarly/creative activity and/or service to the university.  A $1000 award accompanies this recognition by faculty colleagues.

Tenure and Promotion

2021-22 Sabbatical and Development Leave Awards

Dr. Mark Axelrod-Sokolov, Professor, English
Malarkey’s Way; or, Life in The Time of COVID is the third novel in a trilogy of novels titled. Dr. Axelrod also plans to continue writing two volumes of short-short fiction titled, Nietzsche’s Café, Axel’s Charhouse, Secret Histories, Vol. IV and Bartleby’s Books, Gatsby’s Café, Secret Histories, Vol. V.

Dr. Julye Bidmead, Associate Professor, Religious Studies
“Recovering Women’s Religious Rituals” will be the first monograph to document and investigate women’s religious rituals from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including ritual theory and rites of passage analysis. Dr. Bidmead will also edit a monograph series, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion, in the Ancient Near East with Bloomsbury Academic Press, London.

Dr. Lisa Leitz, Associate Professor, Peace Studies

Dr. Nancy Martin, Professor, Religious Studies
“Post-colonial and Global Incarnations and Invocations of Mirabai” is the third and culminating monograph of Dr. Martin’s three-volume comprehensive life’s work on the extremely popular Hindu woman saint-poet Mirabai.

Dr. Jan Osborn, Associate Professor, English
“Rhetorical Ecologies: Assimilation or Hybridity” is an empirical high school environment study that foregrounds the nonlinear processes of materialization in discoursal space, considering how the visual elements in school environments exert power and induce thought and action, serving as actants in the border spaces in Orange County public high schools serving Latinx communities.

Pedagogical Innovation Grants

The grant for Pedagogical Innovation is intended to support faculty in innovative teaching that advances Chapman’s aim to provide students with personalized education of distinction that leads to inquiring, ethical, and productive lives as global citizens.

Dr. Anna Leahy, Professor, English
Open Educational Resources: Aspects of a Writer