Weekly News, April 3, 2026

• Rachel Dwyer has been awarded the 2026 Harlan Hatcher Arts and Sciences Distinguished Faculty Award, which recognizes a full professor who has a truly exceptional record in teaching, research, and service. Fun fact – Harlan Hatcher was a former dean of ASC at OSU and prior president of the University of Michigan. Congrats Rachel!

   

• Kudos to Victor Espinosa who received a fellowship offer in the Global Arts + Humanities' Society of Fellows (2026-27). The theme for the 2026-27 Society of Fellows seminar is Cultures in Motion.

   

• Adrijana Miladinovic and Anneliese Schenk-Day have been selected to receive the Graduate Associate Teaching Award. The award is Ohio State’s highest recognition of the exceptional teaching provided by graduate students serving as Graduate Teaching Associates. Congratulations to you both!

   

• Sam Clark and the Reference Data Archive team – including Yue Chu (Sociology PhD graduate and now Sociology Postdoc) and Jason Thomas (IPR Data Scientist) from OSU completed creation of the Reference Data Archive (RDA) secure trusted research analysis and data sharing portal at the World Health Organization (WHO). The project was conceived to accelerate and democratize the pool of global training data available to create, test, and validate cause of death ascertainment methods. Additionally, Sam Clark was appointed to the WHO Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Health Statistics that is developing a global strategy on strengthening national mortality data systems to improve the availability, quality, and use of mortality data for public health action.

   

• New research published in Leisure Sciences on generational changes in playing sports informally versus formally, by Chris Knoester and Chris Bjork (Vassar), was written about by OSU News. Knoester was also featured in the OSU Alumni magazine, answering alumni mailbag questions about youth sports. 

   

• Rachel Skaggs, one of our courtesy faculty members, has been selected as a Short-Term Research Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. She will spend her time at the Collegium working on a new book project about the career paths of artists and creative workers in the face of major labor market disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of GenAI.