Chester Fritz Distinguished Professors Michelle M. Sauer
Daphne E. Pedersen
Since joining the Department of English faculty in 2008, Michelle M. Sauer’s teaching and extensive research have focused on medieval literature, theology and history as well as linguistics and gender and women’s studies.
In her 17-year career at UND, Daphne Pedersen has become a nationally and internationally recognized sociologist. She has published more than 60 journal articles investigating topics such as gender, the sociology of health, and how work and stress shape individual well-being.
As one colleague nominating Sauer for the distinction wrote: “Michelle’s scholarly influence is on a national and international scale; she puts UND on the map for her extensive work in medieval studies that crosses disciplinary boundaries of English history, languages, religion, queer studies and gender studies.”
Pedersen currently serves as Department Chair of Sociology, and is the immediate Past-President of Alpha Kappa Delta, the international sociology honor society. Her career as a professor has been consistently recognized through awards from the University, including the Bertin C. Gamble Award for Individual Excellence in Teaching in 2007 and the UND Foundation/Bertin C. Gamble Faculty Award for Individual Excellence in Teaching, Research or Creative Activity, and Service in 2018.
An active and respected scholar in these fields, Sauer’s role as a professor is also highly lauded as being dedicated to undergraduate and graduate levels of learning and research. Students at the College of Arts & Sciences have referred to her as a fierce advocate for first-generation, minority and LGBTQ students.
In 2018, Pedersen also presented her research regarding “Stress and Burnout in Higher Education” for an installment of UND’s prestigious Faculty Lecture Series.
Her co-edited work, The Lesbian Premodern, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award – a prestigious award recognizing LGBTQ literature. A number of her monographs, edited collections, peer-reviewed journals and blog articles have also been nominated for awards.
Colleagues nominating Pedersen for the Chester Fritz Distinguished Professorship award also recognized her repeated service as an Alice T. Clark Scholars Faculty Mentor. Since 2010, Pedersen has mentored numerous faculty members new to UND.
Her advocacy has extended to her service work with regional, national and international organizations to promote medieval studies and “bring muchneeded equity and diversity to it,” according to a nominator. This work includes guiding the creation and development of Medievalists of Color, an international organization aimed to advance critical race and cultural studies within medieval studies, and to support the work and experience of people of color both inside and outside of academia.
“I believe it is very telling that incoming faculty repeatedly choose Dr. Pedersen’s career as one they would like to emulate,” wrote one nominator. Pedersen’s research profile has been characterized as “including collaborative efforts with a variety of individuals, both students and other faculty both within and outside of her department.” “She has been consistently rated by her colleagues as ‘exceeding expectations’ when it comes to her research efforts,” a colleague wrote.
“Prof. Sauer’s research record is second to none,” a colleague wrote. “The accomplishments detailed in her CV are awe-inspiring. Her distinguished publishing record, which includes numerous peer-reviewed monographs, edited volumes, book chapters and journal articles, is made all the more impressive by the number of those publications that have received special recognition and awards from her disciplinary peers.
Since 2018, Pedersen has served as a co-principal investigator on a $1 million National Science Foundation grant for Undergraduate Scholarships with Mathematics and Science Training, Exploration and Research. Pedersen has led the social sciences research efforts associated with that grant, which “aims to identify the effectiveness of high-impact practices and mentorship in curbing attrition among underserved students in the STEM fields.”
“More proof of the significant impact she has made and continues to make in her field is the extensive list of plenary, featured, keynote and invited conference presentations she has delivered regionally, nationally and internationally.”
Also, since 2018, Pedersen has been Co-Editor in Chief of The Social Science Journal, for which she previously served six years as Associate Editor. She has also held numerous positions on editorial boards for publications including Teaching Sociology, the top Scholarship of Teaching and Learning journal in her discipline, and Marriage & Family Review – the latter of which has had Pedersen on its board since 2007.
Sauer has been nominated for multiple teaching awards at UND, including being recognized as a “Faculty Star” in 2011 and 2012. In 2013, she was a finalist for the UND Undergraduate Teaching Award, and was a semifinalist for the UND Graduate/Professional Teaching Award in 2020. For her research, Sauer received the Thomas J. Clifford Faculty Achievement Award for Individual Excellence in Research in 2016.
Her research on college student populations contributes to the University’s understanding of student success, stress and well-being in higher education, wrote another nominator. Pedersen put that background into practice by serving as a member of UND’s Task Force on The Future of Higher Education from 2020 to 2021. “Dr. Pedersen has worked closely with a large number of students – both undergraduate and graduate – while at UND, providing them with opportunities to participate in research, professional presentations and peer-reviewed publications,” the nominator continued.
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