Alumni Gazette: Commencement 2021

University Distinguished Guests

Honorary Doctor of Science
James Wyant ’67 (MS), ’69 (PhD) is a professor emeritus and founding dean of the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. The founder of two companies that produce optical measuring equipment, Wyant is a life trustee of the University.

Eastman Medal
John (Dutch) Summers is an entrepreneur and the CEO of the Rochester-based global private equity firm Graywood Companies. Begun as a small tool and die business started by Summers’s father, Graywood Companies has grown to its current scope under Summers’s direction. Over the past few years, much of his philanthropy has been focused on education.

Alice Holloway Young ’57 (Mas), ’69W (EdD) is a groundbreaking educator, community leader, and children’s advocate. During a decades-long career with the Rochester City School District, she was among the first African American teachers in the district and the first African American to hold the titles of reading specialist, vice principal, and principal in RCSD. She wrote and supervised the district’s first integration programs, including the Urban-Suburban program, the oldest voluntary desegregation program in the country.

University Teaching Awards for Excellence

Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
Reinhild Steingröver is a professor of German at the Eastman School of Music and an affiliate professor of film studies in the Program of Film and Media Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences. She has won grants and awards from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft Foundation, the Suhrkamp Foundation, and the Eastman School, which awarded her the Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
Stewart Weaver is a professor of history in the School of Arts & Sciences. He teaches on subjects including global exploration, natural history, the history of India, British history, and the First World War. In 2019, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and this year his project to document change in a remote area of India won the Public Outreach Award of the American Society for Environmental History.

Graydon Curtis ’58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Nontenured Faculty Teaching Excellence
Tricia Shalka is an assistant professor in the Warner School of Education’s higher education program. Among her research interests is the internationalization of higher education with an emphasis on the experiences of international students in American colleges and universities. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Trauma Studies in Education and is on the editorial board of the Journal of College Student Development.

Graydon Curtis ’58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Nontenured Faculty Teaching Excellence
Ellen Matson is the Wilmot Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts & Sciences. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Her awards for her teaching and scholarship include the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation’s Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

William H. Riker University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching
Brian Brent is the Earl B. Taylor Professor at the Warner School of Education. Brent and his colleagues reimagined the EdD degree and developed one of the first accelerated cohort models of doctoral education for school administrators in the country. At Warner, Brent has served as the senior associate dean for graduate studies and as the acting dean.