Awards Presented at Faculty Senate Kickoff

09/27/2024

The Faculty Senate held its annual Kickoff Dinner on Tuesday, Sept. 17. During the ceremony, the Senate handed out The John A. Slosar Shared Governance Award and the Dr. Norman A. White Award for Engaged Scholarship and Service to members of the faculty. 

The John A. Slosar Shared Governance Award

The award was established in 2004, and honors John Slosar’s leadership and stalwart commitment to the principles and practice of shared governance.  Slosar, a member of the Saint Louis University faculty from 1971-2004 (and more recently faculty emeritus and co-director of the Doerr Center for Social Justice Education and Research in the School of Social Work), chaired the Faculty Senate Planning Committee and was instrumental in the senate's creation. He served as the senate's first president from 1979-1980 and again from 1999-2001; and over the years served as a senator and member of various senate committees.

Slosar played important roles in governance in the School of Social Work, in the university at large, and at a national level. He served as AAUP SLU Chapter President five times in addition to other AAUP roles regionally and nationally.

The purpose of the award is to honor and recognize a faculty member who has provided outstanding contributions to the advancement of shared governance at Saint Louis University.

This year’s winner is Bonnie Wilson, Ph.D., from the department of Economics at the Chaifetz School of Business.

Wilson's contributions to shared governance are both wide and deep. She has served on the Senate, on a variety of Senate committees, most recently on the Governance committee, and she has participated at all levels of governance from the AAUP to numerous University committees, to her school and department.

She was the leading force in designing the Workload survey that the Governance committee conducted last year and in analyzing the results. 

The people who wrote letters to support Wilson's nomination called her an “outsized presence … large in energy, in passion, and in persuasiveness,” and a colleague valued for her “integrity and genuine care for due process, academic freedom and shared governance.”

They said she is “unfailingly collegial and attentive to the perspectives of others” and that “there are few faculty members who do the work of shared governance with the dedication and grace that Bonnie so consistently demonstrates.”  

Dr. Norman A. White Award for Engaged Scholarship and Service 

The Dr. Norman A. White Award for Engaged Scholarship and Service, established in 2018, is an expression of our community’s deep gratitude for the life and work of Dr. Norman White.

White embodied Saint Louis University’s commitment to collaborative academic-community partnerships that seek to “alleviate ignorance, poverty, injustice and hunger; extend compassionate care to the ill and needy; and maintain and improve the quality of life for all persons1,” through engagement, dialogue, reflection and action.

White came to SLU in 2004 as an Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice. A scholar-activist, Norm dedicated himself to helping vulnerable children and youth in the St. Louis region flourish in the face of poverty, violence and oppression. He was a principal architect of SLU’s Overground Railroad to Literacy Project and Shut it Down: Closing the School to Prison Pipeline, projects whose aims are to promote racial equity, to promote access to high-quality education as a fundamental public good, and to dismantle systemic racism.

The purpose of the award is to honor and recognize a faculty member who exemplifies community-engaged scholarship and service at Saint Louis University.  This year two faculty are receiving this award Katherine Matthews, M.D. and Kenya Brumfield-Young.  

Mathews is a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Health and the Associate Dean of Health Systems Science in the SOM. Mathews embarked on her medical career with a passion for service at the forefront of her life. She started her medical service in St. Louis in 1998 when her medical service was split between hospital and community-based healthcare, including Grace Hill Neighborhood Center and St. Louis ConnectCare.

She joined SLU in 2010 where she worked with the SOM to set up Casa de Salud, a free health clinic that provides healthcare to uninsured and under-insured patients, with a focus on immigrants and refugees. She has also undertaken substantial public policy and advocacy work around maternal and child health. 

A nominator shared that one of the most captivating aspects about Mathew's CV is that she has worked diligently to create policy changes within our state’s government. Even early in her career she was working with Governor Bob Holden’s implementation of changes to Missouri Medicaid that led to expanded coverage for low-income women diagnosed with breast and cervical cancer. As her career continued to develop, she worked alongside Governor Eric Greitens bringing attention to the need of improved pregnancy outcomes in the state of Missouri. Due to her advocacy efforts, she was appointed to the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts and the Women’s Health Council. During her time in these roles, she was able to help create improvements in Medicaid that extended postpartum healthcare coverage. She also played a vital role in the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 

Mathews worked with Dr. Norman White through the Advocate for St. Louis strategic planning work group. Through these endeavors, Dr. Mathew’s mission developed to focus on the impact of incarceration on minority communities. This has culminated in leading the effort to provide services for people transitioning out of jail and prison into the community through the new SLU Mobile Van. 

Brumfield-Young is an assistant professor and the internship coordinator for the Criminology and Criminal Justice program. 

Brumfield Young’s efforts center on vulnerable populations, including young people who find themselves involved in the juvenile legal and child welfare systems, particularly those who identify with marginalized groups. She has done key work providing written testimony and draft legislative language to the Missouri House of Representatives to improve the operations of the Missouri criminal court system and Department of Corrections. This includes efforts to create clearer language and protocols to ensure incarcerated individuals who are subsequently found innocent are released from prison in a timely manner.

Brumfield-Young has been working with the House to create a bill that will streamline the process for releasing those exonerated of crimes and ensure they are not needlessly detained in prison.

Following George’s Floyd’s murder in 2020, recognizing the impact of ongoing systematic racism on the lives of Black students, Brumfield-Young created a space for School of Social Work students to connect, share, and support one another. The community that Kenya fostered embraces a radical recognition that our students are more than just their grades; they are human beings first and foremost.

Colleague Dyan McGuire, Ph.D. wrote “I know Norm would be delighted because he and Kenya share many of the same interests and passions. They are both committed to social justice through grass-roots advocacy. People who just wanted to 'talk about social justice' annoyed the heck out of Norm. He always said social justice 'that’s just talk” is meaningless.' He believed action is what counted. Kenya is like Norm. She is not all talk, she is all action."

She works with numerous organizations to ensure racial equity and justice for kids. Organizations she works for include Empower Missouri, the ST. Louis County Family Court, and Caring for Kids. 

Past recipients of each award can be found on the Faculty Senate page.