Attracting and retaining top quality students and faculty is the key to maintaining the momentum of a university that is on an “upward soar,” Chancellor Gordon Gee said during his annual address to the Fall Faculty Assembly.
“Over the past five years, we have made so much academic progress at such a rapid rate that we are currently poised to enter a very small group of the greatest universities in the world,” Gee said on Aug. 25 at the Student Life Center.
“We are in the upward trajectory of a very high and weightless leap, and we know that the only way for us to sustain this upward soar is to maintain our ability to fund the efforts most key to our strategy.”
The faculty gathers at the beginning each fall and spring semester to hear an address from the Chancellor and recognize the accomplishments of some of their peers.
Gee awarded the Earl Sutherland Prize for achievement in research to education researchers Lynn and Douglas Fuchs, a husband-wife research team who hold the Nicholas Hobbs Chair in Special Education and are investigators at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development.
The Thomas Jefferson Award went to Douglas Knight, professor of Hebrew Bible and co-director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. The award recognized extraordinary contributions as a member of the faculty in the councils and government of the university.
Gee also announced six winners of The Chancellor’s Awards for Research, and awarded 37 others with commemorative chairs for 25 years of service to the university.