Lifetime achievements

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Victoria Brown

Emily Moore

Teaching is at the heart of Grinnell College’s mission statement, and few professors have taken on that responsibility to teach with more seriousness or enthusiasm than Victoria Brown.

Since arriving at Grinnell in 1989, she has electrified classes with her courses in American history and the history of women in the United States. She particularly excelled at one-on-one meetings with her students; her candid and thoughtful advice helped shape students’ work and, often, their future career paths.

Students praise her for her influence on them as critical thinkers, as writers, and as people. They often cite her as the person who nudged them into careers in social service and social action. In 2006, she was named the L.F. Parker Professor of History, and in 2012 the Princeton Review named her one of the top 300 professors in the country.

As a scholar, Brown has focused much of her research on the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. She has published extensively on the pioneering social reformer and political activist Jane Addams, including a biography, The Education of Jane Addams. She is co-author of Going to the Source, an American history textbook. Currently, she is researching the history of American grandmothers in the 20th century.

The Organization of American Historians has named her a distinguished lecturer.

Brown’s service to the College has been extensive. She has served as chair of the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program, chair of the History Department, and chair of the Social Studies Division. She was also a co-founder of the Scholarly Women’s Achievement Groups and chair of the Expanding Knowledge Initiative Committee.

For her exceptional work as a historian and for her even more profound influence on generations of students, we are pleased to recognize Victoria Brown as Professor Emerita of English.

At small colleges, professors are asked to achieve excellence as scholars and as teachers. Since arriving at Grinnell in 1980, Emily Moore has excelled at both, tackling challenging research while forging sincere and productive relationships with her students.

As a scholar, her early work focused on the use of computers in education. In 1997, she returned to pure mathematics, focusing specifically on combinatorics, a branch of mathematics that has implications for fields including coding theory and astronomy. In 2013, she co-authored Difference Sets: Connecting Algebra, Combinatorics, and Geometry. This textbook grew out of work with students in her senior seminar.

As a teacher, Moore focused on combinatorics and abstract algebra. Students say that her guidance transformed them not just as mathematicians, but as learners. Thanks in part to her legendary patience, she helped them become more resilient as they tackled challenging problems and concepts. Women in particular say her presence in the classroom and the department encouraged them to go further than they thought possible in their mathematics careers.

Her service included more than a decade of work in athletics as a faculty representative for the Midwest Conference, first for the women’s conference then as part of the merged men’s and women’s conference. She twice served as its president. On campus, she spent several years on the Admissions and Student Financial Aid Committee. Perhaps most visibly, she was a regular presence at athletic events, theatre productions, and other student activities. A strong believer in the full liberal arts experience, she made an effort to support students not just in the classroom, but in all the ways they pursued excellence outside of it.

For her achievements as a scholar, for her mentorship to women in mathematics, and for her commitment to the Grinnell College community, we are honored to recognize Emily Moore as Professor Emerita of Mathematics.

Professor Emerita of English

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Professor Emerita of Mathematics

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Thomas Moore

Ira Strauber

A strong sense of purpose and community helps a small college flourish. Tom Moore transformed this abstract vision into daily actions by fostering excellence in the classroom and building meaningful relationships with students outside of it.

As a statistics teacher, he brought out the best in his most talented students, giving them the tools, the advice, and the recommendations that allowed them to pursue master’s degrees and doctorates in statistics. But even those students who took just his introductory class in statistics came away with a more nuanced understanding of the use and misuse of statistics in our everyday lives. His students at every level laud him not just for his skill as a teacher, but also for his warmth and generosity as a person.

Outside of the classroom, Moore has explored the link between statistics and the liberal arts. In 1987, he co-founded the Statistics in the Liberal Arts Workshop. This annual event, which is committed to improving statistics education at liberal arts colleges, has thrived for nearly 30 years. In 2008, in part because of this work, he received the Mu Sigma Rho Award for Outstanding Statistics Educators.

His service includes years of dedicated work to the American Statistical Association, where he was chair of the Statistical Education Section. He was elected fellow in 1998.

He also has served as a member of several committees for the Mathematical Association of America.

He has been deeply engaged in the daily life of the College, carving out time to attend countless student events. Students and alumni are in awe of his ability to remember them — and their work — years and even decades after they have completed his classes.

For providing the academic foundation that has led many students into statistics careers, and for supporting students in all of their endeavors, we are pleased to honor Thomas Moore as Professor Emeritus of Mathematics.

During the course of Ira Strauber’s career, he has excelled as a scholar. He has published extensively on constitutional law and politics, jurisprudence, and legal theory. In 2002, he published Neglected Policies: Constitutional Law and Legal Commentary as Civic Education. This important book challenges the conventional manner in which scholars think about and teach constitutional law. In 2003, the book received the prestigious C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association.

He never hesitated to explore issues outside of his primary areas of scholarship, publishing journal articles and thoughtful essays on topics as far-ranging as baseball, technology, and fatherhood.

Since arriving at Grinnell in 1973, his teaching has included courses on constitutional law and politics and political theory.

An early innovator of team-teaching, he worked with other professors to offer team-taught courses including Medieval and Renaissance Culture and Technology and Politics.As a teacher, he held his students to exceptionally high standards. He taught students how to engage with — and struggle with — difficult texts and asked them to prepare by reading material multiple times. He required them to write precisely and succinctly.

Decades later, his former students say that they internalized these lessons and that they continue to pay dividends.

His service to the College has been both extensive and meaningful. He has served many terms as chair of the Political Science Department. He has done important and difficult work as chair of the Academic Honesty Subcommittee. He mentored two of Grinnell’s Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows, generously offering time and advice to junior scholars who flourished under his guidance.

For doing important work of the highest caliber, and for demanding the same of his students and colleagues, we are pleased to recognize Ira Strauber as Professor Emeritus of Political Science.

Professor Emeritus of Mathematics

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Professor Emeritus of Political Science

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