Giving Stories

Recognizing Faculty Impact

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Award named for former biology professor continues to promote excellence.

Prior to this year’s commencement, the Class of 2021 chose Associate Professor of Marketing Kashef Majid as the 23rd recipient of the Mary W. Pinschmidt Teaching Award. “It was totally unexpected, ” says Majid. “It’s an individual award, but I think there’s really so much more. Your work in the classroom is a reflection of so many other people. It really is a team effort—it’s not that I hold something magical.”

Associate Professor Kashef Majid is the recipient of the 2021 Mary W. Pinschmidt Teaching Award.

Majid might not hold a magical power, but his commitment to students during a pandemic year makes him stand out as a dedicated professor – just like Dr. Pinschmidt.

Named in memory of a beloved and longtime biology professor, the Mary W. Pinschmidt Teaching Award was established to annually recognize one faculty member selected by graduating seniors to have had the greatest impact on their lives. The late Mary Pinschmidt was one such exemplary professor.

Posthumously promoted to Distinguished Professor of Biology, Pinschmidt was committed to her students. She was heavily involved in Chi Beta Phi, pioneered several graduate and continuing education programs, and worked for many years on the HIV-AIDS Education Committee. In 1982, she became the eleventh recipient of the Grellet C. Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the highest faculty award at Mary Washington.

Dr. Mary Pinschmidt taught biology at Mary Washington for 37 years.

Pinschmidt also helped restructure Mary Washington’s general education program, including more core learning experiences for students of all levels. She even taught a class two days before her sudden illness and unexpected death in 1998. Perhaps most importantly, she left an enduring impact on the faculty and students who knew her.

Students quoted in the December 3, 1998, issue of The Bullet fondly remembered Pinschmidt as a “friendly, kind professor who was always there to help and never in a bad mood.” Her colleague at the time, Professor of Psychology Roy Smith, remembered her as “a wonderful presence in the classroom. She was an ultimate teacher. That’s who she was.”

Pinschmidt taught at Mary Washington for 37 years, often serving in high-level administrative roles. Her husband, Bill Pinschmidt, also taught biology at Mary Washington. Immediately following her death, those who knew her were determined to keep Mary Pinschmidt’s legacy alive by making gifts in her memory. Ultimately, those memorial gifts from caring family, friends, faculty, staff, and students helped create the teaching award that bears her name.

Professor Farnsworth (left) received the first Mary W. Pinschmidt Award in 1999 at Mary Washington’s commencement.

In 1999, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Stephen Farnsworth was selected as the award’s first recipient.

“I’m one of the dwindling number of faculty members whose time at Mary Washington overlaps with Dr. Pinschmidt,” says Farnsworth. “I was honored to receive the award because she was an extraordinary faculty member, so committed to student excellence. It’s a wonderful tribute to her that this award exists. It’s great that it keeps her memory alive in a generation of students who now weren’t even born when she taught here.”

While today’s UMW students do not have the opportunity to learn from Pinschmidt, they continue to benefit from her legacy through lectures inside the Mary W. Pinschmidt Lecture Hall in Jepson Science Center and through the faculty who continue to share her commitment to student excellence.

For information about making a gift to support students and faculty, visit giving.umw.edu or contact the Office of Advancement at advance.umw.edu.

Article written by Advancement Intern Tabitha Robinson ’24

Following the Music

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Scholarship helps student pursue dreams.

Morgan Anderson ’22 already has three degrees from Germanna Community College, including one in early childhood education. She now is majoring in music at the University of Mary Washington and plans to teach elementary school.

“I have always prioritized education and believe it is the critical foundation for success,” says Morgan.

She is grateful to be the 2020-2021 recipient of the Myrtle Hollins Isbell Scholarship. The scholarship honors the life and memory of Myrtle Hollins Isbell, who graduated from Mary Washington College in 1923 and became a home economics teacher.

As a full-time student at UMW, Morgan works several jobs to help pay for school. She is currently a part-time teaching assistant at a preschool in her hometown of Culpeper and also babysits on the weekends. The Isbell Scholarship offers Morgan financial reassurance during her time at Mary Washington and provides her with the opportunity to make her education the top priority.

After graduation, Morgan plans to enroll in UMW’s Master of Education program to earn her teaching license for music education, but her plans do not stop there.  “As an educator, you are continuously learning and thriving with the children you encounter,” says Morgan. Her passion and dedication to learning and educating others makes Morgan successful and serves as an inspiration to all.

Written by Darlene Mugisha ’21

Recognizing Excellence

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Privately funded award goes to Professor Mara Scanlon.

What began with a gift from an anonymous donor has now become reality with the naming of the first recipient of the Donald E. Glover Faculty Award. The award criteria specify the recipient be a full Professor of English who has demonstrated dedication and excellence in teaching, energizes and inspires their students, and encourages creative thinking. The 2021-2023 recipient of the monetary award is Mara Scanlon, professor of English and associate director of the UMW Honors Program.

Dr. Mara Scanlon is the first recipient of the Donald E. Glover Faculty Award

“Mara has been an excellent teacher, and she is a leader in integrating digital technology into the classroom, while offering thoughtful, exciting courses,” says Dr. Gary Richards, professor and chair of the Department of English and Linguistics. “Her classes are consistently student-centered, and she is unfailing in her attention to promoting students’ learning. Additionally, her annual teaching evaluations have been consistently glowing for years, and she is one of the most beloved instructors at UMW.”

A member of the UMW faculty since 1999, Scanlon currently is a full professor of English, as well as an affiliated faculty member of the interdisciplinary programs in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; American Studies; and Asian Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in twentieth-century literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she wrote the dissertation “Novelty in Verse: Bakhtin and the Multivocal Epics of Pound, H. D., and Walcott.”

Her areas of academic expertise include: twentieth-century literature, especially Modernism; poetry (epic, lyric, long poem); ethics and literature; women’s literature and gender theory; literature of the First World War; periodical studies; Asian American literature; and genre studies.

Among Scanlon’s many awards are the 2014 Grellet C. Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Mary Washington and a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Grant for “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman,” a 2008-2010 multi-university collaborative teaching project.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English Donald E. Glover taught at UMW for 37 years

An anonymous donor from the Class of 1971 endowed this award to recognize the inspirational teaching of her favorite professor and the impact it had – not only on how to approach reading literature – but also on how to apply analytical thinking skills to everyday life. Donald E. Glover began teaching English at Mary Washington in 1961 and retired as Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 1998 after 37 years of service. He passed away in August of 2020, but his legacy continues through the enlightened lives of the students he taught, and now in the inspired work of the faculty who succeed him.

“The Glover Award publicly documents the excellent teaching that Mara has done and, I hope, energizes her as she continues to change lives in the classroom,” says Richards. “Any time a faculty member is energized that, of course, benefits students, who thrive on dynamic professorial presences in the classroom.”

Scanlon says she is touched by receiving an award named for Donald Glover. “He has been described to me by his contemporaries as kind, passionate, creative, and devoted to his students.” She adds, “Though innovation is paradoxically predictable in my teaching, the award stipend will support my continued growth in fields of scholarly interest with direct effects on my classroom.”

She plans to utilize a portion of the monetary award to focus on her scholarship and teaching on literature of the Great War (WWI). “Two areas of increasing importance to me are first, the intersection of my scholarship and teaching on literature of the Great War with the work I do in the field of Ethics and Literature, a nexus I am beginning to explore in nurses’ representations of pain. The second is the 1918 flu pandemic, the wave of global devastation that overlapped and eventually dwarfed the war’s human toll. Extraordinarily little has been written about the 1918 pandemic in literary genres,” says Scanlon. “In a Spring 2022 iteration of the course I hope to include a text for a student audience now fully aware of what a ‘pandemic’ looks like. The Donald Glover award will allow me to obtain the scholarly materials necessary to bring these topics into the classroom with more expertise.”

Scanlon says she also will use award funds for various poetry classes she teaches UMW students, as well as one planned for an upcoming Elderstudy presentation about Emily Dickinson. “The Donald Glover award will, again, enable me to purchase materials that reinforce my own scholarship in these fields,” she says. “Eventually, I hope this will be part of a larger scholarly project, as well as having benefits for my traditional students and those in our regional Elderstudy community.”

All the above is in keeping with the wishes of the anonymous donor, who writes, “My hope is that Mary Washington English faculty can follow in Dr. Glover’s footsteps, while having a positive and lasting impact on students’ lives.”

*To read more about Dr. Mara Scanlon’s academic background, visit bit.ly/umwscanlon.

*To read more about Dr. Donald E. Glover and the gift behind the endowed faculty award, visit bit.ly/umwglover0221.

*For information about making a gift to support UMW students, faculty, and programs, contact the Office of Advancement at advance@umw.edu or 540-654-1024.

 

Article by Donna Harter, Executive Director of Advancement Initiatives

 

 

Going Above and Beyond …

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Alumna will match gifts to the Beyond the Classroom Endowment.

Long before she led the effort to modernize food safety for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Catherine O’Connor Woteki ’69 was a student lab assistant in Combs Hall.

Catherine O’Connor Woteki ’69

“Doing behind-the-scenes prep work and just being able to hang around the lab was so helpful; I became much more comfortable working in a lab environment,” says Cathie, referring to her 1968 position in Mary Washington’s Biology department.

Cathie earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Chemistry from Mary Washington, where she served as class treasurer and helped pay her way through school with summer jobs. She hopes to provide today’s UMW students with opportunities to discover their strengths and passions, just as her early experiences in the lab helped to inspire her career as an internationally known leader in science policy.

Through the end of July, Cathie and her husband Tom Woteki will match dollar-for-dollar all gifts to UMW’s Beyond the Classroom Endowment for student research and learning. The University’s College of Arts and Sciences aims to raise $1 million for this new fund to support internships, study abroad, independent research, and other high-impact learning experiences.

“About two years ago, [College of Arts and Sciences Dean] Keith Mellinger told me about his idea to create a fund that will give students more experiences outside of the classroom, such as traveling to present research, attending a professional society meeting, or completing an unpaid internship,” says Cathie, who works closely with Mellinger as a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Board. “After he shared his vision, I knew I wanted to help make it happen.”

A well-respected scholar who has received many awards for her contributions to science and society, Cathie was inducted into the National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hall of Fame in 2017. She has held leadership positions in academia, government, and industry, including Dean of the College of Agriculture at Iowa State University, the USDA’s first Undersecretary for Food Safety, Global Director of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs for Mars, and USDA Chief Scientist.

As the first Undersecretary for Food Safety, a position created by the Clinton administration, Cathie led the agency through a transformation of the meat inspection system. Her efforts to base the process in science led to lasting benefits for public health.

“Through the introduction of pathogen testing in meat-processing plants, we were able to illustrate a dramatic reduction in foodborne illnesses,” she explains. “The application of science to benefit people is incredibly rewarding.”

Cathie as pictured in the 1969 Battlefield

Cathie credits her Mary Washington professors with instilling confidence and providing a strong scientific foundation, putting her on the path to scholarship and leadership.

She also holds a Ph.D. in Human Nutrition from Virginia Tech. “Many of my classmates in graduate school came from larger universities where they had more experience with advanced instrumentation, but when it came down to it, I was more capable than many of them,” she says. “The quality of the Mary Washington education was just that good.”

Mellinger says he relied on Cathie’s insights and guidance to narrow his focus for the endowment.

“She was instrumental in the creation of the fund, so her sponsorship of this match is perfect,” he explains. “It’s incredibly rewarding to hear that Cathie’s experiences at Mary Washington played such an important role in shaping her career.  We are ever grateful that she and Tom are now creating those same opportunities for our next generation of students.”

A loyal supporter of Mary Washington initiatives, Cathie contributed to an endowed scholarship by the Class of 1969 in honor of their 50th Reunion. She says she views her match for the Beyond the Classroom Endowment as a way to lead by example.

“My classmates are enormously successful, and so many other Mary Washington alumni have gone on to do amazing things,” Cathie says. “I hope others will join me in giving back as a way of saying thank you for the education we received.”

Donate by July 30, 2021, to have your gift to the Beyond the Classroom Endowment matched dollar-for-dollar during the Catherine O’Connor Woteki ’69 and Tom Woteki Beyond the Classroom Match.

Click here to make an online gift, or mail a check to:
University of Mary Washington
1119 Hanover Street
Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401
Please make check payable to UMW Foundation and note “Beyond the Classroom Endowment” on the check’s memo line.

For more information about giving, contact the Office of Advancement at umwgift@umw.edu or 540-654-1024.

 

Article written by Beth Waters Hunsinger ’01

Planning Matters – Spring 2021

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Read the latest issue of Planning Matters:

  • Learn how scholarship recipient Nicole Altenberg ’23 plans to combine her psychology major with her passion for dance.
  • Discover how IRA rollovers can support Mary Washington without increasing your taxable income.
  • Hear how Janet L. Hedrick ’73 continues to utilize and appreciate her Mary Washington education.
  • Read a note of appreciation from President Troy D. Paino.
  • See the latest news about Seacobeck Hall construction and its planned opening.

Click here to read now.