Summer is here and many faculty members are enjoying their off-contract season, but the College of Liberal Arts is still in full-swing. A number of faculty members have been quite busy obtaining grants and awards gearing up for a successful summer in the College.

Assistant professor in history, Christopher Church, recently won the 2018 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book prize for his book Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean. The French Colonial Historical Society awards this prize annually for the best publication in French colonial history.

Assistant professor of communication studies, Jenna Hanchey, just received a grant from the Waterhouse Family Institute for the study of communication and society. Hanchey faced tough competition for this grant as the awarding institute received an unprecedented number of applications from across the world and only awarded about 15 percent of them. The Waterhouse Family Institute is part of Villanova University's Department of Communication and serves communications scholars who strive for a fair social world.

Assistant professor of theatre and dance, Gavin Mayer, just received word that the production Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, under his direction, received numerous nominations for the 2018 Colorado Theatre Guild's Henry Awards. Mayer is a resident director at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in Denver, Colorado where this play was produced. Some of the nominations for this production include Outstanding Production of a Musical, Outstanding Direction of a Musical and Outstanding Musical Direction. The Henry Awards will take place July 23, 2018 in Lone Tree, Colorado.

It's clear College of Liberal Arts faculty members are staying busy this summer. Their continued success doesn't go unnoticed even in the quieter months.