Current News

Professors receive teaching, research awards

September 02, 2005

The institution's most prestigious faculty awards were made Sept. 1 during the college's 91st Convocation ceremony, which signals the start of the academic year.

Marc Zimmer, Barbara Zaccheo Kohn '72 Professor of Chemistry, has received the 2005 Nancy Batson Nisbet Rash Faculty Research Award for excellence in academic research. Sunil Bhatia, associate professor of human development, has received the John King Faculty Teaching Award for teaching excellence.

Zimmer, who in 2001 was given the John S. King Faculty Teaching Award, in May was appointed to the Barbara Zaccheo Kohn '72 Endowed Professorship for Excellence in Teaching. Zimmer joined the college in 1990 and specializes in computational and environmental chemistry and molecular science.

In 2002, he was named the first Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Teaching Professor at Connecticut College. Zimmer is also a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar and the program chair for the inorganic division of the American Chemical Society.

His area of specialization is inorganic computational chemistry. Zimmer's book, "Glowing Genes: A Revolution in Biotechnology," published this year, is the first popular science book on jellyfish and firefly proteins, which can help fight cancer, create new products, improve agriculture and combat terrorism.

Zimmer's colleague, Sunil Bhatia, joined Connecticut College in 1999. His research focuses on the development of self and identity within the context of postcolonial migration, globalization and formation of transnational diasporas. In particular, it attempts to reformulate the concept of culture and identity in cultural psychology and human development by showing how critical concepts, such as diaspora and transnational migration, force us to redefine theories of culture, identity, cultural difference and development.

He is finishing work on his forthcoming book, "Terms of Difference: Culture, Identity and the Indian-American Diaspora," which is based on an extensive, two-year ethnography of the Indian diaspora in southern Connecticut.

Bhatia has published more than a dozen articles and book chapters on issues related to language, self, immigrant identity and cultural psychology. His articles have appeared in many academic journals.

Nancy Rash was the Lucy C. McDannel '22 Professor of Art History and taught at Connecticut College for 23 years. Her father, General Dillman Rash, and her husband, Frank Turner, Yale University Professor of History and a Connecticut College trustee, established a research fund to be presented annually to one of the most outstanding and highly regarded members of the faculty.

The late John S. King was a beloved professor of German whose warmth and humanity touched all who knew him. The award bearing his name was established by friends, colleagues and former students to recognize those teacher/scholars whose high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students reflect John's own ideals.

View Marc Zimmer's faculty profile, and Sunil Bhatia's faculty profile.

For media inquiries contact: Amy Martin (860) 439-2526; a.martin@conncoll.edu