Three SUNY Oneonta faculty members and 196 students were honored for academic excellence at the annual Susan Sutton Smith Lecture and Award Reception on April 5.
Professor of Archaeology Renee Whitman delivered this year’s Susan Sutton Smith Lecture, titled, “Beyond Human’s Best Friend: The evolution of dogs and their role in human society.” Whitman is the 2021-22 winner of the Susan Sutton Smith Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence, which was created to recognize faculty achievement outside the classroom and is named in memory of the late SUNY Oneonta professor of English.
A 20-year member of the Anthropology Department, Whitman’s primary research and teaching interests are in zooarchaeology, Eastern North American archaeology, PaleoIndian and Archaic period subsistence patterns, prehistoric North American dog domestication and the archaeology of hunter-gatherers. She has fieldwork experience in North America and Europe and has conducted much of her research at the site of Dust Cave, Ala. She is the author of an introductory textbook, “Prehistoric World Culture.”
Two additional faculty members were recognized at the event. Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences faculty member Andrea Fallon-Korb received the college’s annual Outstanding Lecturer Award, and Diana Willis, adjunct assistant professor of Communication and Media, received the annual Simphiwe Hilatshwayo Award for Outstanding Part-Time Instructor.
Nearly 200 student recipients of the Susan Sutton Smith Award for academic excellence were also recognized in conjunction with the event. The awards are given each spring to first-year students, sophomores and juniors who have earned a grade-point average of 3.9 or higher on a 4.0 scale.
This lecture and the awards for academic excellence are made possible by the generous gifts of SUNY Oneonta alumni to the Fund for Oneonta. The Susan Sutton Smith Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence is made possible by an endowment created through the generosity of Dr. Thomas and Mrs. Mary Smith in memory of their daughter, Susan, in honor of her commitment to academic excellence.