Kudos: Read about faculty, staff and student awards, appointments and achievements

(iStockphoto)
(iStockphoto)

Erin Barton, assistant professor of special education, and Christopher Lemons, assistant professor of special education, have received the Distinguished Early Career Research Award from the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division of Research. The award honors scholars who have made outstanding scientific contributions in basic or applied special education research within the first 10 years of their careers. Barton and Lemons will receive their awards in April 2017 at the CEC Special Education Convention and Expo in Boston.

Earl E. Fitz, professor of Portuguese, Spanish and comparative literature, delivered the 56th Christopher Longest Lecture at the University of Mississippi on Nov. 14. The title of his talk was “Faulkner and Latin America.”

Edward H. Friedman, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish and director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, was the keynote speaker at the 
Cervantes at Play conference held at King’s College London Oct. 17-18. The title of his paper was “Stagestruck: Cervantes’s Theater and the Play of Contexts.”

Two Vanderbilt students have received scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or DAAD), the largest funding organization in the world supporting the international exchange of students and scholars. Carolyn Taratko received a Graduate Study Scholarship, and Eli McDonald was accepted into the Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE Germany) program. DAAD programs help create goodwill and professional relationships that build a solid basis for relations between Germany and North America.

Jalesa Webster, an administrative assistant at Vanderbilt Law School, has been named Miss Black Tennessee USA. She will represent Tennessee in the Miss Black USA pageant in Washington, D.C., in August 2017.