Milestone Years of Service
As part of spring celebrations, seven CMC faculty were honored for milestone service to the College. Congratulations to the following professors:
45 years of service
Nicholas Warner, Professor of Literature
30 years of service
Manfred Keil, Associate Professor of Economics
Ronald Riggio, Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology
25 years of service
Hilary Appel, Podlich Family Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow
William Ascher, Donald C. McKenna Professor of Government and Ethics
Daniel Krauss, Crown Professor of Psychology and George R. Roberts Fellow
Michael O’Neill, Professor of Mathematics
Leading up to CMC's 78th Annual Commencement on May 16, the College recognized several faculty members for exceptional scholarship, teaching, and service.
“I never get tired of celebrating all of you,” said Heather Antecol P’29, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty and James G. Boswell Professor of Economics, who led the Annual Celebration of Faculty Awards program near the end of the spring semester. “It is truly a privilege to work alongside you and to represent you in my capacity as Dean.”
By the numbers, Antecol shared the faculty’s prolific scholarly output during the 2025 calendar year: 103 peer-reviewed journal articles, 34 book chapters, 17 books, six creative works, and 100 miscellaneous other publications, such as book reviews, interviews, and op-eds.
“This is truly a staggering body of scholarship that we are celebrating, together with our recognition of excellence in teaching and service to the College,” Antecol said to the Athenaeum audience.
For her significant contributions to the faculty and the College writ large, President Hiram Chodosh also recognized Antecol with his final Presidential Award for Merit, one of CMC’s highest honors.
Antecol joined CMC in 2001 and was named Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty in February 2021. With strategic and visionary leadership, Antecol has successfully recruited almost 50 world-class tenure-line faculty to CMC—including 20 new hires for the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences—and has been at the forefront of new research and curricular initiatives across the College’s academic program.
A distinguished labor economist and prolific scholar, Antecol’s research has been recognized on a global scale and published in numerous highly respected economics journals. For her service to the College, which includes previous roles as Chair of the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance and Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children (now the Berger Institute for Individual and Social Development), she has been honored with the Roy P. Crocker Award for Service and the Glenn R. Huntoon Award for Superior Teaching.
In remarks before Commencement, President Chodosh further shared: “When the history of the College is updated, I believe Heather will be known as the most productive Dean in the school’s history. Heather is a powerhouse.”
Please join the CMC community in congratulating all of the 2025-26 faculty award winners:
Nicholas Buccola, Dr. Jules L. Whitehill Professor of Humanism and Ethics and Chair of the Government Department
G. David Huntoon Senior Teaching Award
Buccola, who was installed as the Whitehill Chair last month, is a political philosopher with expertise in American and African American political thought. He has published several highly acclaimed books, including The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America and, his most recent book, One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal.
Buccola’s student nominators called him “incredibly fascinating, super knowledgeable, and kind,” adding that “he makes learning interesting.” One student wrote, “Professor Buccola embodies both brilliance and kindness; a combination that makes his classroom unforgettable.”
Steven Zhou, Assistant Professor of Psychological Science
Glenn R. Huntoon Award for Superior Teaching
Zhou, also the Director of the STATS Lab, is among a small number of professors in the College’s history to earn this award as a first-year faculty member. Already broadly published, his research and teaching focus on quantitative methods and data science as applied to organizational phenomena such as leadership, personality, and career development. As this year’s awardee, Zhou served as the faculty marshal at Commencement.
Wrote one of his student nominators, “Professor Zhou understands how learning works. He is always exploring new and interesting things he’s learned that might be helpful in the classroom.”
Sarah Marzen, Associate Professor of Physics, Department of Natural Sciences
Faculty Scholarship Award
A specialist in biophysics, Marzen’s research cuts across numerous fields—neuroscience, machine learning, dynamical systems, information theory, and physics—to tackle pressing biological problems. In the past three years, she has been a principal- or co-investigator on more than $11 million in research grants and has published 17 papers.
“I say this bluntly and without exaggeration: Sarah’s research achievements and output are off-the-charts phenomenal … her scholarship success matches that of many high-achieving scientists at some of the nation’s top research universities,” wrote one peer nominator.
Paul Nerenberg, Kravis Associate Professor of Integrated Sciences: Computational Science
Roy P. Crocker Award for Service
Nerenberg, a computational scientist, joined the CMC faculty as an inaugural Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences (KDIS) faculty member, bringing to the department his expertise in using physics-based simulation methods and machine-learning methods to study molecular systems. Through a vote by his faculty peers, this award honors widespread support for colleagues and the College, including serving as advisor for students pursuing the 3+2 Combined Program with Engineering Partner Schools and leading the effort to acquire a high-performance computing cluster from the National Science Foundation.
“Paul takes a huge service role within our department, including mentoring junior faculty, leading our course planning committee, and a multitude of other … service in this community,” shared a peer nominator.
Cameron Shelton, McMahon Family Professor of Political Economy and Chair of the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance
Dean’s Distinguished Service Award
Naming Shelton as this year’s honoree, Antecol noted his “willingness to serve the College in every possible capacity.” This includes, among many other contributions, simultaneously directing the Lowe Institute of Political Economy, chairing the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, overseeing the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major, serving on numerous key committees, and guiding students as an academic adviser and thesis supervisor, all while publishing a steady stream of articles in top field and general interest journals.
“In making this selection,” Antecol said, “I found myself thinking about the many different ways faculty contribute to the life of College, and one person immediately came to mind who seemingly embodies all of them.”
At a spring celebration, CMC also honored Professors Scot Gould, Donald McFarlane, and Emily Wiley, who retired at the end of the 2025-26 academic year after contributing “so profoundly to the intellectual and social vitality of our community,” Antecol said.
Scot Gould, Professor of Physics, is retiring after 35 years of service to the Department of Natural Sciences (formerly the W.M. Keck Science Department). His focus on interdisciplinarity influenced the creative application of physics to other fields, even banking, and he frequently advised students combining a physics major with a non-science discipline.
Donald McFarlane, the Kenneth S. Pitzer Professor of Biology and Environmental Science, also comes after 35 years with the Department of Natural Sciences (DNS). “If Indiana Jones were real, he might envy McFarlane’s adventure-packed scholarly life,” said a 2021 CMC article, referring to his research on cave and bat ecology, which has taken him around the world. McFarlane also studies paleo-environmental records, active volcanic lakes, and properties of high explosives.
Emily Wiley, Professor of Biology, will retire after 24 years with DNS but continue as the Director of Program Development for CMC’s Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences, a position she’s held since 2023. Wiley, who traveled to Croatia on a Fulbright award in 2024, has served in numerous leadership capacities at the College, including Associate Dean of the Faculty for Science from 2019 to 2021 and Co-Interim Dean of the Faculty in fall 2020.
“Their commitment to their students, their research, their colleagues and friends, and our shared academic enterprise is extraordinary,” Antecol said in celebration of the three CMC luminaries.