Outstanding Faculty Service Award for Magdalena James-Pederson

The Outstanding Faculty Service Award is given to a full-time faculty member whose service has significantly advanced the mission of Stonehill College. The Faculty Academic Vision statement affirms that “a Stonehill education prepares students for meaningful lives by encouraging service to the common good, the practice of responsible citizenship, and the pursuit of professional and personal fulfillment.” As we expect this for our students, we expect the same from our faculty. Therefore, public service and service to the academic community are highly valued by the faculty at Stonehill College. This award recognizes a cumulative record of noteworthy accomplishment in service on the part of a faculty member. The recipient stands as a symbol of the entire faculty’s commitment to sustaining our community. In 2015 Stonehill College is proud to bestow the Outstanding Faculty Service Award on Professor Magdalena James-Pederson.

Your career at Stonehill began in 2003 as a part-time Chemistry lab instructor and lab preparer but from the beginning, the only thing “part-time” about your work was your compensation. In 2006, when the College was awarded the STEP grant, aimed at recruiting and retaining more students in the sciences, you were offered a full-time appointment to assist with the implementation of the grant. What a perfect opportunity for you to combine your great enthusiasm for students, for the sciences, and especially for supporting minority students in the sciences.

Your work on the STEP grant was the first indication that you have secret powers to add hours to every day. You mentored first year students, you recruited Stonehill students to tutor science students at Massasoit Community College, and you coordinated the Science Summer Bridge Program which gave students from diverse backgrounds a head start in their transition to college. As the coordinator you did it all: reading applications, hiring mentors, and even helping students move into their dorms. No task was beneath you and all tasks were done with care.

Even the novelist Richard Russo could not invent a plot line where an untenured, junior member of the Chemistry department winds up as Chair of the Biology department? He obviously doesn’t know you. At a critical moment for the Biology department, in a move that was both surprising and logical, we asked you to step in as Chair. You knew that the challenges were enormous, the work was relentless; yet you said yes for the compelling reason that the College needed you for this work. In the nearly five years as Chair, you have gained the respect and admiration of colleagues within the department and across the institution.

You have said yes to service in small and large ways during your time at Stonehill. You served on the Nomination Committee of the Faculty Senate (now the Faculty Governance Committee) and on the Intercultural Affairs. You have spent countless weekends at Admission events and writing letters to prospective students. You are serving on the Student Experience Committee for the strategic plan and are part of the design team for the soon-to-be-launched 4-year advising/mentoring program. You were one of two faculty representatives on the Presidential search committee. The list goes on. As a colleague has commented, “Magda is an indiscriminate collaborator.”

For that that quick sense of humor and infectious smile, for your generous spirit, and for your countless hours of selfless work on behalf of students and colleagues, we honor you today.

And so with deep pride we confer the 2015 Outstanding Faculty Service Award to you, Professor Magdalena James-Pederson for your tireless service, consistent example, and exemplary contributions to Stonehill College.

Given this thirtieth day of April,

Two thousand and fifteen