CHICAGO, IL (February 13, 2009) – Columbia College Chicago Provost and Senior Vice President Steven Kapelke has announced this year’s appointments for Distinguished College Scholar, Artist, and Teacher. Each of these Columbia faculty members has amassed an extraordinary body of work and has demonstrated the potential to continue to produce innovative and important work during their fellowships.
Distinguished College Teacher
The Television Department’s Dr. Beau Beaudoin, was recently named the 2008 Illinois Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A leader in the field of pedagogy and best teaching practices, Dr. Beaudoin has presented numerous papers and facilitated workshops on Media Literacy, Analysis and Multicultural Learning at national conferences. Dr. Beaudoin was also responsible for the development of the Columbia’s Culture, Race and Media course in which students learn to examine their ethical responsibilities in media and communications. This course now enrolls more that 30 sections each semester, a testament to its popularity and success. Dr. Beaudoin has also introduced a number of workshops at the college on learning theory, classroom methods and pedagogy. As Dr. Beaudoin’s Chair, Michael Niederman notes, “Beau personifies the criteria [of Distinguished College Teacher].”
Distinguished College Artist
Fiction Writing’s Joe Meno has published six critically acclaimed books, the most recent of which is the collection Demons in the Spring (Akashic). He is at work on his seventh book, The Great Perhaps. Meno is the recipient of the Nelson Algren Award and the Midland Authors Award for Fiction and three awards from the Illinois Arts Council. His novel The Boy Detective Fails, was a Kirkus and Chicago Tribune Best Book. Meno has also published many short stories and his work has appeared in such prestigious journals such as Tri-Quarterly and Mid-America Review. Meno is also the author of eight plays that have been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. A diverse and prolific writer, Meno was called “The hardest-working writer I know,” by Fiction Writng Department Chair Randy Albers. Visit www.joemeno.com to learn more.
Distinguished College Scholar
The English department’s Dr. Tony Trigilio continues to excel as both a scholar and a poet, having recently been awarded a 2009 Artists Fellowship in Poetry from The Illinois Arts Council. His recent book Allen Ginsberg’s Buddhist Poetics has been hailed as a significant contribution to the body of criticism of Ginsberg. Dr. Trigilio is also the author of Strange Prophesies Anew: Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D and Ginsberg and is recognized as one of the nation’s foremost scholars on Beat literature, a title he solidified by organizing the Beat Generation Symposium at Columbia in the fall of 2008. Dr. Trigilio was the co-editor of the anthology Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870 – 1930 (Rutgers University Press, 2008). Dr. Trigilio is currently at work on two new projects: one on Diane DiPrima’s spiritual poetics and an edited volume of surviving fragments of the poems of Beat writer Elise Cowen which, as English department Chair Ken Daley says “…would deepen our understanding of the often underappreciated contributions of women artists in the mid-twentieth century of avant-garde.” Dr. Trigilio serves as the director of the creative writing-poetry program at Columbia.
Beaudoin, Meno and Trigilio will serve in their awarded positions for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years. The two-year appointments are intended to help them make their scholarly inquiry or creative process and work-in-progress visible across departments and disciplines, helping to engage colleagues and students throughout the campus.
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