The National Society of Collegiate Scholars’ Inspire Integrity Awards are the only student-nominated faculty and administration awards scholarship. Students nominate full-time faculty and administration who, through their lessons and actions, made a significant impact on the lives of their students and instilled a high degree of personal and academic integrity. Meet this year’s recipients! Check out the profiles of the other winners, Eric Goins, nominated by Julia Ostrovsky, and Dean Emanuel Chestnut, Nominated by Aric Justice.
Andrea Sununu
Professor, English Literature
DePauw University
Nominated by Rachel Higson
You can imagine my astonishment when I received your letter with its news that my advisee Rachel Higson had nominated me for the Inspire Integrity Award from the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. When I began teaching in the fall of 1973, I strove to emulate the teachers and professors who had inspired me as a student; now, four decades later, it is to my students that I owe whatever success I may have in the classroom.
Who but my students would inspire me to spend long hours in my office, both to write up my comments on their writing and to confer with them? I’m deeply grateful to students such as Rachel for their willingness to sign up for hour-long conferences- even at midnight or later; to consider my suggestions as they rewrite paper after paper; and to assert that they carry into other courses what they learn from mine.
I will do my best to try to deserve this honor; meanwhile, feeling the inadequacy of words with which to express my gratitude, I will simply quote Kent’s response to Cordelia, “To be acknowledged, Madam, is o’erpaid” (Shakespeare, King Lear 4.7.4).
The Inspire Integrity Awards are presented each year during Integrity Week. Faculty and administration recipients are awarded a $1,000 professional development award, and the students who nominate them receive a $1,000 scholarship.