Sunn "Shelley" Wong and Stephen Morgan have been awarded Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Academic Advising Awards in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, which honors them as undergraduate advisers who make a difference in the lives of their students. Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon and John Hale have been awarded Robert and Helen Appel Fellowships for Humanists and Social Scientists, which recognize and reward faculty excellence.

All were honored May 28 at a trustee-faculty dinner recognizing universitywide teaching and advising awardees and newly tenured faculty.

Wong, associate professor of English, has served as director of the Asian American Studies Program for more than nine years. As director, she worked closely with students in the process that eventually led to the creation of the Asian/Asian American Center in 2008. Since 2007 she has served as a faculty fellow at Carl Becker House. In 1999, an aeronautical engineering student in the Merrill Presidential Scholars Program named her his most influential professor. Her research focuses on Asian American, African American, Asian Canadian and ethnic literatures, and cultural studies.

Morgan, professor of sociology, has served as the director of Undergraduate Studies and has been the director of the Center of the Study of Inequality since 2007. He also serves on the College Scholar Advisory Board and the Rhodes/Marshall Scholarships Endorsement Committee. His areas of research include education, labor market inequality and methodology. In addition to many journal articles on these topics, he has published two books.

Van Clief-Stefanon, associate professor of English, teaches a course on poetry and science to explore the ways in which these seemingly distant realms speak to one another's concerns. She mentors and regularly teaches in the Auburn Prison Program. She is the author of "Open Interval," a collection of poems that draws on the intersections of astronomy and mathematics, history, literature and lived experience; "Black Swan"; and "Poems in Conversation and a Conversation," a chapbook.

Hale, associate professor of linguistics, studies cognitive science with a focus on computational linguistics. His research goal is to find explanations of the mind's unique language-using abilities in terms of particular algorithms, data structures and computer architectures using the formal methods of logic and probability, as well as the empirical findings of linguistics and psycholinguistics. He has been awarded the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award and a grant from the Cornell Institute for the Social Sciences.

The Paul academic advising award recipients will receive a semester's leave with full salary and benefits. The Appel fellowship recipients will receive a semester's sabbatical leave, at full salary, to write, develop new courses, conduct research or otherwise enrich their teaching and scholarship.

Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.