Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Laura Brown has announced that faculty members Kathy Berggren, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Debbie Cherney and Mariana Wolfner have been chosen for the 2012 Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Awards. They were honored May 26 at a trustee-faculty dinner recognizing universitywide teaching and advising awardees and newly tenured faculty.

Berggren

Berggren, a senior lecturer in communication, joined Cornell in 1993. "My primary teaching goal," she states, "is to provide students the confidence to be effective communicators in their personal, public, and intellectual lives. Learning should be meaningful an applicable to one's experiences." Berggren has also been the recipient of the Clarion Award for curriculum design, the Merrill Presidential Scholar award and CALS Faculty Honors. This spring she was one of 40 people in the state to participate in the Partners in Policymaking leadership training program. Berggren has also been nominated for the Greek System Excellence in Teaching and Service Award every year since 2004.

Bronfenbrenner

Bronfenbrenner is a senior lecturer who teaches and does research on union and employer strategies in organizing and bargaining in the global economy, particularly the impact of trade policy on employment, wages and unionization. Prior to joining Cornell in 1993, she was for many years an organizer and union representative with the United Woodcutters Association and a welfare rights organizer. Her honors include ILR's 60th Anniversary Outstanding Contribution to Labor Education Award, the Labor Party's Karen Silkwood Award, the New York Labor History Association's John Commerford Labor Education Award, General Mills Foundation Award for Exemplary Undergraduate Teaching and the Robert N. Stern Mentoring Award.

Cherney

Cherney, associate professor of animal science, has been teaching and advising students for nearly two decades. She currently serves as the faculty adviser to the Pre-Vet Club and Sigma Alpha Agricultural Sorority. She teaches large courses in animal nutrition and bioethics and advises 30-35 undergraduates and mentors 10-15 undergraduate teaching assistants annually. Cherney has been the recipient of the CALS Innovative Teacher Award, the Professor of Merit Award and the Donald C. Burgett Distinguished Advisor Award, which recognizes outstanding undergraduate advising of individuals and student organizations.

Wolfner

Wolfner, who is a member of Cornell's graduate fields of genetics and development and biochemistry, molecular and cell biology and ecology and evolutionary biology and of the Cornell Center for Comparative and Population Genomics, joined Cornell in 1983. Wolfner has been the recipient of a DuPont Young Faculty Award, Career Advancement and POWRE Awards from the National Science Foundation, and a Faculty Research Award from the American Cancer Society, and she was a Basil O'Connor Scholar of the March of Dimes. At Cornell, she has received such awards for teaching and advising as the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Award, Stephen and Margery Russell Award and a Stephen H. Weiss fellowship.

The Carpenter Award recipients will receive $5,000 each. The awards, which underscore the importance of undergraduate advising, were established by Cornell trustee Stephen Ashley, CALS '62, MBA '64, to honor his adviser, the late Professor Kendall S. Carpenter, who taught business management from 1954 to 1967.