Five Saint Mary’s Faculty Receive Honors

On May 6, President Katie Conboy and Interim Provost Megan Zwart honored five faculty members for a variety of awards and recognitions at the 2025 President’s Reception. The reception was held in Stapleton Lounge in Le Mans Hall. 

 

Colleen Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., Communication Studies, Dance, and Theatre
The Kevin J. and Marijo Rogers Kelly ’77 Faculty Service Award 

 

The Kevin J. and Marijo Rogers Kelly ’77 Faculty Service Award recognizes a faculty member who demonstrates exceptional commitment to local, regional, national, or international service to an academic field. This year’s honoree, Colleen Fitzpatrick, personifies these attributes.

 

Fitzpatrick is deeply invested in the program, her colleagues, and her students, who wrote of her, “she leads with a servant’s heart, empowering us to be responsible leaders and engaged citizens. During staffing shortages, she shouldered numerous responsibilities, including increasing the number of student advisees, serving as chair of an eclectic department, and advocating for professional specialists and non-tenure track faculty. In addition to her work as department chair, she serves as her department’s internship program coordinator. She has supervised more than 400 internships at the local, national, and international levels—while she also guided 200 senior comprehensive projects. 

 

Fitzpatrick is not content to serve her own department; she extends herself beyond departmental boundaries. In this effort she has served as the director of student services and as interim chair in another division.

 

Her willingness to contribute when there is a need has been a hallmark of her time here at Saint Mary’s. As another of her colleagues put it, “When I think of (this person), I think of someone that does good things when no one is looking.

 

Jennifer Fishovitz, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry and Physics
The Donald R. and Nora Barry Fischer ’73 Award for Teaching Excellence

 

The Donald R. and Nora Barry Fischer ’73 Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence celebrates professors who instill a deepened understanding of the field by stimulating intellectual scholarship and encouraging creative thinking.

 

Using research on teaching science, Jennifer Fishovitz has transformed the way she teaches and, in the process, showed the way for others in the discipline as well. With a focus on student engagement and creative approaches, the classroom is a laboratory where students feel empowered to go beyond their comfort zone and delve deeply into the subject.“There was a lot to do in the course but it was always work that would help me learn” noted one student. 

 

Fishovitz won a Ball Venture Foundation grant for research implementing new methods of grading that maintain high standards with opportunities for revision, such as reducing student test anxiety. In advanced courses, she created a teaching game to help students learn content, and build meta-cognition and higher order thinking skills. Both of these have resulted in publications in top scholarship of teaching journals and have been presented in multiple conferences across the country.

 

Fishovitz generously shares her passion and expertise with colleagues to elevate teaching excellence across campus and in their field.

 

Karen Harag, MLS, Cushwa-Leighton Library
Carmi and Chris Murphy Award for Student Mentorship

 

While at Saint Mary’s, Karen Harag, winner of the Carmi and Chris Murphy Award, has advised dozens of students who arrive dazed about their senior comprehensive research project. Harag meets students where they’re at and helps them build skills, develop their ideas, and to believe in their abilities, all of which they’ll need to become purposeful researchers.

 

As a librarian and educator, she possesses deep knowledge about conducting, documenting, and writing about research. Faculty colleagues from multiple disciplines invite her to guest-lecture in their courses so both they and their students can learn. She works with these faculty to scaffold research skills for students, creating an integrated support system between the library, the faculty, and the Writing & Tutoring Center. Due to Harag, the landscape of student research in multiple disciplines has brightened, becoming more expansive and genuinely joyful.

 

Harag was recognized as this year’s award recipient for her generosity of time and spirit in helping her students achieve excellence.

 

J’Andra Antisdel, Ph.D., Department of Nursing Science
Karen Bush Schneider Faculty Scholarship Award

 

This year’s Karen Bush Schneider Faculty Scholarship Award recipient—J’Andra Antisdel—has an impressive portfolio of peer-reviewed publications and presentations at regional, national, and international conferences. Her research sheds light on hidden corners of online culture, examining patterns of harm and risk that are often overlooked. There is a special focus on the experiences of vulnerable populations navigating digital spaces, raising urgent and timely questions that demand attention. This recipient’s ability to translate research findings into actionable strategies makes a broader impact on society. 

 

Colleagues describe Antisdel as innovative, collaborative, and deeply committed to advancing research. Currently serving as a postdoctoral fellow, her work continues to uncover how the digital world affects mental health and intersects with real life. This work is already shaping how practitioners assess, support, and care for individuals, particularly youth, who are impacted by cyber victimization. 

 

Building on her exceptional scholarship journey, Antisdel has further demonstrated her commitment to psychiatric mental health by being involved with the Center for Enhancing Quality of Life in Chronic Illness. Her steadfast dedication to advancing mental health is evident in her groundbreaking leadership to integrate educational technology and artificial intelligence in the classroom, and enhancing faculty confidence in using these innovative tools for teaching.

 

For her ongoing work that continues to elevate the standards of research and practice in nursing, Antisdel is the 2025 recipient of the Karen Bush Schneider Faculty Scholarship Award.

 

Thomas F. Bonnell, Ph.D., Department of English
Professor Emeritus

 

At the close of his 43rd year on the Saint Mary’s faculty, Tom Bonnell has advanced to the status of Professor Emeritus. A recipient of the Maria Pieta award, Bonnell was beloved by his students for erudition and enthusiasm. A stalwart contributor to the W Program, Bonnell served for decades on the steering committee and one term as program co-director.

 

A constant innovator, Bonnell’s 20 varied courses ranged from Dante in his popular “Sorcery & Damnation” class to contemporary fiction in “British Literature after Empire.” The heart of Bonnell’s teaching, however, lay in the 18th century. His three books are landmarks of 18th-century studies. His 2008 monograph, The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810, redefined the relationship between 18th-century publishing and canon formation, while his editorship of Volumes 3 and 4 of James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript in Four Volumes enhanced the capacity of genetic textual editing to illuminate a stylistic masterpiece. His scholarship has been recognized by the Karen Bush Schneider Scholarship award, Andrew Mellon and NEH Fellowships, and election as a Senior Warnock Fellow at Yale’s Beinecke Library. The Most Disreputable Trade has been hailed by reviewers as “humanist bibliography at its best: thoroughly researched, clearly presented, and a pleasure to read.”

 

One W student shared this memory: “Professor Bonnell introduced this class by describing the power and evolving meaning of words. His example was the word ‘wallow.’ I remember he described how the verb ‘to wallow’ comes from what pigs do in the mud. He demonstrated ‘wallowing’ by pretending to be a pig and rolling around against the white board in front of the class. It was so funny and informative.”

 

May 19, 2025