The Sonneborn Award comes with a $3,500 cash award and a $1,000 grant to support research or creative activity, according to the ?release.
Hossler will also present the annual Sonneborn Lecture during the fall semester. Both the award and lecture are named for the late IU biologist Tracy M. Sonneborn, a geneticist who was also highly regarded for his teaching, according to the release.
Hossler is director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at IU-Bloomington. He was executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center from 2010 to 2012 and has been IU Bloomington vice chancellor of enrollment services and IU associate vice president of enrollment ?services.
“This is my 30th year at IUB, and the Sonneborn Award and Provost Professorship represents a significant and personally meaningful recognition,” Hossler said in an email. “I believe that our higher education system, second only to our K-12 system of education, is one of the most important foundations of our society. I have had the privilege of having a rewarding and diverse career.
“As a faculty member, I have been associated with first rate colleagues in our highly regarded higher education and student affairs graduate program where my goal as a scholar was simple: not to be the laggard among the group,” he said. “Having also had the opportunity to, so-to-speak, to ‘practice what I have studied’ as an administrator with a group of talented and committed professionals on the Bloomington campus and across all of Indiana University has made for a meaningful and gratifying career and made my research richer and more grounded when I returned to the faculty.”
Hossler’s research interests include student college choice, college persistence, enrollment management and higher education finance in the context of the United States. He teaches courses in graduate programs in higher education and student affairs. He has also provided testimony to the U.S. Department of Education on a proposed college rating system.
“Don Hossler is an asset to the IU Bloomington community as well as to national policy-makers in higher education,” Tom Gieryn, vice provost for faculty and academic affairs, said in the release. “Don is an important part of the conversation on research, policies and procedures in higher education in the United States. I look forward to hearing his Sonneborn lecture this fall and expanding this discussion to include the campus and community.”
Additionally, three faculty members have been selected as Provost Professors. This title is reserved for interdisciplinary scholars and are appointed directly by provost.
Randall Beer is a professor in the cognitive science and neuroscience programs in the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor in the School of Informatics and Computing. His research areas include artificial intelligence, artificial life, cognitive science, complex networks and systems and robotics.
He directs the National Science Foundation-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program in the dynamics of brain-body-environment systems in behavior and cognition within the Cognitive Science Program.
Kari Ellen Gade is a professor of Germanic studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and has been an IU faculty member since 1986. Her fields of interest include Old Norse-Icelandic language, literature, culture and history. She teaches courses in Old Norse-Icelandic sagas and poetry, older Germanic languages and Norse history.
She is one of the world’s two foremost experts on Old Norse-Icelandic poetic meter and skaldic poetry, which was composed in Scandinavia from the ninth to the 14th centuries and offers contemporary testimony to heroic feats in battle, religion, history and culture in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe.
“It is kind of difficult to find words, because I don’t think it has really sunk in yet,” Gade said in an email. “It is a great honor to me and to the Department of Germanic Studies. It is fantastic to be recognized for doing two things that are so very important to me and I enjoy doing so much, namely, research and the teaching and mentoring of students. I would like to thank my department for nominating me and also all of those who wrote in support of the nomination.”
Stephanie Sanders is a professor of gender studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and associate director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. She has been a faculty member at IU Bloomington for more 30 years and has served as interim director of the Kinsey Institute three times.
She has served as president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the oldest professional society dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about sexuality. She was awarded the society’s Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award in 2007 and received its Distinguished Service Award in 2014.
The Provost Professors will receive an annual award of $2,500 for three years and a $5,000 grant for a project that demonstrates how teaching and research are mutually reinforcing, according to the release.
All four faculty members will be honored at a reception during the fall 2015 ?semester.
