2018 Faculty Awards

As a graphic design educator, Kelly Bryant teaches publication design with a strong emphasis in typography. She also instructs in the areas of branding, illustration, and drawing. As a design educator for 30 years, she has received several teaching awards including the Silver Medal Award in Art Education from the Auburn Chapter of Tau Sigma Delta, the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Auburn Chapter of Mortar Board and the Auburn University Alumni Undergraduate Teaching Award. Bryant is a practicing designer and artist whose work explores the beauty of typography. Her research has focused on integrating traditional forms of tactile art making with computer technology in the form of publication, identity and poster design. This research has been recognized nationally and internationally through exhibitions, books and awards. The international design magazine Uppercase 35 has a feature article on Bryant's current research titled, "Kelly Bryant: Collages and Paintings inspired by Playful Typographic Details."

James H. Long is a two-time Auburn graduate, earning a BSBA in 2001 and a MAcc in 2002. He began his professional accounting career in Atlanta as an auditor with Gifford, Hillegass & Ingwersen, LLP and subsequently worked as an internal audit manager with National Vision, Inc. before returning to academia to pursue a PhD at Virginia Tech. After completing his doctorate in 2009, Long joined the faculty in the Auburn University School of Accountancy, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate accounting courses, conducts research on the impact of task timing on judgment and decision-making in the accounting domain and develops educational accounting cases. He currently serves as the Director of International Programs in the School of Accountancy and recently completed a semester abroad as a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary. Long enjoys traveling internationally for business and pleasure, and frequently leads study abroad programs for students in the Harbert College of Business. He is also an Auburn sports fanatic and can often be found yelling, "War Eagle!" at various athletic events.

Kyes Stevens is the founder and director of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, or APAEP. With its start in 2001, she designed and built an innovative and sustainable program for education on the inside. Stevens was awarded a fellowship from the NEA to teach poetry at the Talladega Federal Prison in 2001 and grew APAEP from that experience. She was a co-recipient of the first Lillian E. Smith Writer in Service Award, the recipient of the Auburn University Women of Distinction Award in 2010 and also the Auburn University Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2012. Additionally, she was the 2014 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Arts Fellowship recipient and, in 2016, was recognized as an AL.com Woman Who Shapes the State and a 2016 Southerner of the Year by Southern Living. Stevens works with peers from the country to develop strategies for arts and higher education in prison programs, including multiple visits to the White House. She seeks to bolster others in their efforts to develop programming, working as a consultant and advisor to institutions of higher education.

Shiwen Mao is the Samuel Ginn Endowed Professor and director of the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center. He received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from The New York University Tandon School of Engineering in 2004 and joined Auburn University as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2006. Mao received the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award in 2010 and has three service awards from the IEEE Communications Society. His interests include wireless networks, multimedia communications and smart grid.

Cathleen Giustino is the Mills Carter Professor of History and a 2017 Carnegie Fellow. She earned her BA from Grinnell College and her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is the author of Tearing Down Prague's Jewish Town: Ghetto Clearance and the Legacy of Middle-Class Ethnic Politics around 1900 and co-editor of Socialist Escapes: Breaks from Ideology and the Everyday in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989. Her current book project examines state uses of architecture, art and antiques seized from groups targeted for ethnic cleansing in Central Europe during and after World War II. Giustino has held prestigious awards from Fulbright, the American Council of Learned Societies, the International Research Exchange Board, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Philosophical Society and the TEMA Erasmus Mundus European Master’s Programme, for which she was a Visiting Professor at Prague’s Charles University. She also holds the College of Liberal Arts Award for Excellence in the Teaching of the Humanities, the Panhellenic Outstanding Professor Award and the Favorite Educator Award from the Mortar Board National Senior Honorary.

Dave Ketchen serves as a Harbert Eminent Scholar and Professor of Management. Driven by the desire to understand why some companies succeed and others fail, his research on strategic management and entrepreneurship has attracted more than 30,000 citations according to Google Scholar. He has published more than 160 articles in scholarly journals and his research has been published in The Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine. In 2012, Ketchen was awarded the Smeal Graduate Distinguished Achievement Award by the Smeal College of Business at the Pennsylvania State University at 45 years of age. He was the first academic to receive this lifetime achievement award.

Pradeep Lall is the MacFarlane Endowed Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the NSF-CAVE3 Electronics Research Center at Auburn University. He holds joint courtesy appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Finance, and is also a member of the technical and governing council of NextFlex Manufacturing Institute. Lall is a fellow of the ASME, IEEE and the Alabama Academy of Science. He is recipient of the IEEE Sustained Outstanding Technical Contributions Award, National Science Foundation’s Alex Schwarzkopf Prize for Technology Innovation, Alabama Academy of Science’s Wright A. Gardner Award, IEEE Exceptional Technical Achievement Award, ASME-EPPD Applied Mechanics Award, SMTA’s Member of Technical Distinction Award, Auburn University’s Creative Research and Scholarship Award, SEC Faculty Achievement Award, Two Samuel Ginn College of Engineering Senior Faculty Research Awards, three Motorola Outstanding Innovation Awards, five Motorola Engineering Awards and more than twenty-five “Best Paper” awards at national and international conferences. Lall is the author and co-author of two books, 14 book chapters and more than 500 journal and conference papers in the field of electronics reliability, safety, energy efficiency and survivability.

Virginia A. Davis has mentored more than thirty undergraduate researchers since joining Auburn’s Department of Chemical Engineering in 2005. Many of these mentees have become leaders in industry, earned prestigious fellowships and/or received advanced degrees in engineering law or medicine. Davis’ research group focuses on how to make solid materials with controlled microstructure from nanomaterial dispersions and polymer melts. Applications include optical coatings, MEMS, 3D printed structures, light-weight composites, antimicrobial surfaces and substrates for growing beneficial algae. She has five patents and more than 50 publications, which have collectively been cited more than 3500 times. Her national awards include a 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and invitations to several National Academy of Engineering symposia. Davis’ Auburn University awards include Excellence in Faculty Outreach in 2015, an Alumni Professorship in 2014, the Auburn Engineering Alumni Council Awards for Senior and Junior Faculty Research in 2013 and 2009, the Faculty Women of Distinction Award in 2012 and the Mark A. Spencer Creative Mentorship Award in 2011.

The Department of Foreign Languages has a strong culture of teaching and learning. With this award, they plan to expand access to quality foreign language instruction and immersion for Auburn students by developing a micro-study away program in which students speak only in the target language. The department will also support area high school teachers with pedagogical workshops and foreign language teachers statewide by hosting a language assessment workshop open to secondary and higher education institutions. In addition to raising Auburn’s visibility and supporting our charge as a land-grant institution, both initiatives would have a valuable impact on foreign language education in Alabama and could, in turn, impact enrollment by strengthening our relationships with secondary schools.

Dennis DeVries grew up in Chicago and northern Indiana. He earned his BS degree from Purdue University and his MS and PhD degrees from The Ohio State University, and joined Auburn University as an assistant professor immediately after graduation. His area of expertise is in aquatic ecology, and his research is at the interface of basic ecology and applied fisheries management and aquatic resource conservation. DeVries has maintained a continuously funded research program, having received more than $10 million in contracts and grants from diverse funding sources while at Auburn, leading to more than 85 peer-reviewed publications and one edited book. He is also actively involved with graduate student mentoring, with 36 completed and eight current mentorees. Moreover, he has been active in teaching, as well as with service to the university and professional societies.

Melanie Duffey is an assistant professor in the Interior Design program in the Department of Consumer and Design Sciences at Auburn University, which is ranked #9 in the nation by DesignIntelligence. At Auburn, she is the Internship Coordinator and serves as the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and International Interior Design Association (IIDA) faculty adviser for the respective student chapters, where the chapter was nominated and received the national ASID Student Chapter of the Year award in 2018 under her advisement. Duffey teaches primarily undergraduate studios and lecture courses in the upper levels, focusing on advanced design skills and industry-partnerships where students get exposure to real-world parameters of a project and scenarios that are often difficult to simulate inside the classroom. Her research and scholarly articles focus on student and practitioners perceptions of the internship experience, and the exploration of interdisciplinary collaboration within design disciplines.

James H. Long is a two-time Auburn graduate, earning a BSBA in 2001 and a MAcc in 2002. He began his professional accounting career in Atlanta as an auditor with Gifford, Hillegass & Ingwersen, LLP and subsequently worked as an internal audit manager with National Vision, Inc. before returning to academia to pursue a PhD at Virginia Tech. After completing his doctorate in 2009, Long joined the faculty in the Auburn University School of Accountancy, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate accounting courses, conducts research on the impact of task timing on judgment and decision-making in the accounting domain and develops educational accounting cases. He currently serves as the Director of International Programs in the School of Accountancy and recently completed a semester abroad as a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary. Long enjoys traveling internationally for business and pleasure, and frequently leads study abroad programs for students in the Harbert College of Business. He is also an Auburn sports fanatic and can often be found yelling, "War Eagle!" at various athletic events.

Matthew Hall is an assistant professor in the Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction, director of the Scandinavian Study Abroad Program and a principal and designer at Obstructures with an emphasis on object and architectural design. His research focuses on the impact of material culture and the inherently problematic nature of design. Currently, his work is concentrated on the Swedish architects Sigurd Lewerentz and Bernt Nyberg. He was curator and designer for the 2015 and 2016 exhibitions “Endangered Architecture: the work of Bernt Nyberg,” at the Skissernas Museum in Lund Sweden and “Sigurd Lewerentz: Context, Fragments & Influence” at the Klippan Arthall during the fifty-year anniversary of Lewerentz’s seminal work: The Church of St. Peter. Hall recently guest edited a feature issue of A+U #564 on the work of Bernt Nyberg and he lectures internationally on topics of architectural theory and criticism.

Rex Dunham has been a faculty member at Auburn University since 1981. Two events that ultimately sent him to Auburn were the building of a farm pond by his parents when he was 6 and finding a fish hybridization job as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. He served as program leader for the Genetic Enhancement and Breeding Program for the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management in the Philippines, scientific director for Eagle Aquaculture and president of the International Association of Genetics in Aquaculture. Dunham teaches two courses in Fish Genetics, graduated 76 MS students and 34 PhDs, obtained $21 million in grants and published 375 scholarly works, including authoring two books. His research team was the first to demonstrate that selection works in catfish, release genetically improved fish in the United States, make the first transgenic fish in the United States, accomplish reversible sterilization and had the first targeted gene insertion in the non-coding region of a fish. Dunham’s research genetically transformed the national catfish industry twice, the last resulting in the transformation of the United States channel catfish industry into a majority hybrid catfish industry.