Three Department of Anthropology faculty members received notable awards this year at the University of Nevada, Reno. Don Frazier-Don Fowler Endowed Chair in Prehistoric Great Basin Archaeology and Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology Chris Morgan was the recipient of this year’s University Global Engagement Award. Assistant Professor of Anthropology Kyra Stull was the recipient of the Regents’ Rising Researcher Award. Associate Professor of Anthropology Geoffrey Smith received this year’s Regents’ Teaching Award. Each of the award winners took a moment to share about their research in the field and what this award means to them.

Chris Morgan, Don Frazier-Don Fowler endowed chair in prehistoric Great Basin archaeology; associate professor and chair of anthropology | University’s Global Engagement Award

What inspired you to pursue your research and teach in higher education?

When I began working as an archaeologist, I think I was drawn to the discipline for the same reasons as a lot of other archaeologists: I really liked working with tangible things, meaning mainly artifacts. I also liked working in the real, phenomenological world, meaning at archaeological sites and their environmental contexts. But as the years have rolled by, it’s really the intangible, or at least the more abstract things, that keep me passionate. Intellectually, that means contributing to understanding long term trends in human behavior and figuring out what ultimately caused changes in that behavior in different times and places. At a more personal level, there’s nothing like archaeology to make you realize what a fleeting thing our time here on Earth really is, so I love being able to pass on what I’ve l learned to students and more importantly, see them develop intellectual curiosity and research trajectories of their own.

What does this award mean to you and for your work?

It’s really nice to be recognized by my colleagues and my peers for all the hard work I’ve done and its scholarly impact. More importantly, I hope it bodes well for building on the past work I’ve done and for building better international scientific research and collaborative infrastructure between the University of Nevada, Reno and all sorts of colleagues and stakeholders from all kinds of backgrounds and nationalities.

What impact on students do you hope to make each year?

Well, as I mentioned in my first response, I really want students to develop their own ideas, get passionate about whatever it is they’re curious about and ultimately develop their own research and intellectual pursuits. Part of that is accomplished through robust and disciplined instruction – you’ve got to learn the facts before your dive in to new research. But a lot of it is also about exposure and hands-on learning, something I think international work excels at.

What future plans do you have for your scholarly work/research and teaching?

My future plans are pretty much to keep on doing what I’m doing. I’ve got active research agendas here in western North America, Mongolia and Argentina. These keep me and my students more than busy. In the long run, I’d like to integrate and synthesize my research more concretely, at mainly comparative and theoretical levels.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I appreciate the Ozmen Institute for Global Studies for honoring me with this award and for providing such great opportunities for international research, education, service and other forms of engagement.

Kyra Stull, assistant professor of anthropology | Regents' Rising Researcher Award

What inspired you to pursue your research?

I worked on a forensic case when I was a Master’s student that forever changed my research paradigm. While conducting the forensic anthropological analysis and writing the report, I clearly saw the limitations of forensic anthropologists when they were faced with immature remains. From that moment forward, it became my long-term goal to contribute to the forensic anthropological toolkit when they evaluate the remains of children. Since that time, the research and the specific questions have evolved and grown and now I have a team of amazing graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow that are all as curious and dedicated to better understanding growth and development.

What does this award mean to you and for your work?

There are so many amazing researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno and I was flattered to be nominated for such a prestigious award. I am even more honored to be one of the recipients! I know I wouldn't be where I am today without the graduate students that work with me and help collect all the data; the postdoctoral fellow that manages the data and the trainings to ensure our work is reliable, reproducible and valid; or the collaborators that contribute expertise that I do not have. This award shows me that I am surrounded by a spectacular, collaborative team ranging from students to administrators (Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Research and Innovation) and as such, the entire group, as well as the research, is elevated.

What impact on society do you hope to achieve through your work?

My efforts largely up to this point have been dedicated to a better understanding of growth and development and the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that affect it. We then use this knowledge of human variation to develop (or improve) methods to estimate age, sex and ancestry, which is collectively known as the biological profile. The biological profile is the starting point for comparison to missing persons information. The Subadult Virtual Anthropology Database (SVAD) includes individuals from around the world and therefore the outcomes extend beyond the borders of the United States. These results have tangible effects in the field of biological and forensic anthropology and can positively impact society through a better understanding of human variation, as well as improve outcomes in the resolution of medicolegal investigations. In the future, I intend to develop free online tutorials and workshops on virtual anthropology, which will contribute to the removal of systemic barriers in research and higher education and increase access and knowledge regardless of academic institution, advisor, or funding.

What future plans do you have for your scholarly work/research?

The Subadult Virtual Anthropology Database (SVAD) is a living database and we are continuing to work with other countries and collaborators, which is exciting. We have a lot to share from the work we have done so far and I am really looking forward to disseminating our findings. I am also dedicating some effort to solidify the infrastructure for the database and enhance its accessibility. I am waiting to hear about a National Science Foundation proposal that was submitted with a colleague in computer science (Emily Hand). The proposal aims to enable data-intensive research by developing a sustainable and ethical foundational platform to remotely and securely access the SVAD, develop a fully automated segmentation and data extraction pipeline using deep learning techniques to facilitate effective data collection and provide community outreach through free virtual workshops and online tutorials to ensure accessibility of the imaging software, relational database, methodologies and parameters of virtual anthropology. Further, I will continue with on-going projects on the ontogenetic trajectory of the phenotype and cultivate future projects exploring the relationships between the genotype and phenotype and how this fluctuates through ontogeny.

Geoffrey Smith, associate professor of anthropology | Regents’ Teaching Award

What inspired you to pursue your research and teach in higher education?

I did not consider pursuing a career in academia until relatively late. I underperformed as an undergraduate student and did not return to graduate school until after I had traveled extensively and worked in the private sector for several years. My return to graduate school was initially driven by the recognition that I needed an advanced degree to move forward in the private sector. Slowly, I began to realize that I could perform at higher levels — first in a Master's program and later in a Ph.D. program — but it was not until near the end of my time in a Ph.D. program that I seriously considered applying for academic positions. That choice was influenced by some amazing mentors, who encouraged and supported me. I will be forever grateful that they saw something in me that I had yet to recognize in myself. Their own careers and those of other dedicated instructors that I had along the way, inspired me to pursue a career in higher education.

What does this award mean to you and for your work?

It is an honor and career highlight to receive the Regents' Teaching Award and the recognition of my hard work in the classroom is certainly wonderful. That said, receiving this and other teaching awards has provided me with a reward that transcends individual accolades. It has given me the chance to become more engaged in teaching-related committees and workshops here at the University of Nevada, Reno. In turn, that work has introduced me to some of the very best instructors in our campus community. Hearing, seeing and sharing effective teaching practices as part of those service opportunities has taught me more about teaching than anything else. It has allowed me to observe and learn from some truly remarkable instructors.

I think this award marks some sort of record. You have won every teaching award to win, haven’t you?

I have won some other teaching awards like the College of Liberal Arts Deans Award for Teaching, the Alan Bible Teaching Award and the Tibbitts Teaching Award, but this is the first Regents' Award of any sort that I have been nominated for or won. That said, I have been fortunate enough to win several teaching awards over the years. They have each offered a moment to pause and reflect on where I have been, where I am and where I want to be as a teacher. Those moments never last for long, of course, as there is always more work to be done.

What impact on students do you hope to make each year?

Now more than ever, I want students to know that they matter. For high-performing students, I want them to know that they are ready to take the jump to the next level, which may be publishing independent research, participating in fieldwork, or attending professional conferences. For students who are struggling like I did, I want them to know that their worth is not defined by a letter grade in my class. I want them to know that their hard work will pay off and that they will ultimately succeed in the pursuit of their dreams. Finally, I want first-generation University students and students from other historically underrepresented groups to know that they belong at the University of Nevada, Reno and academia more broadly. We need their voices more than ever.

What future plans do you have for your scholarly work/research and teaching?

I am a decade into my career as a University instructor. I was tenured five years ago and will be going up for promotion to full professor in a year or so. While I still occasionally publish sole-authored papers, conducting collaborative work with graduate and undergraduate students brings me far greater joy. At this point in my career, I see my role as akin to that of a point guard in basketball: I am most effective when I set those people around me up for success. That means helping my students with a grant proposal, editing their article manuscripts and pushing them to take an active role in fieldwork planning and execution. It means offering words of encouragement or guidance when they need it. It means taking joy from their successes rather than focusing primarily on my own. Moving forward, I hope to redouble my efforts to help the students around me. At the end of the day, I measure my success by their success.

Anything else you’d like to add?

It is often easy to focus on the negative aspects of being a tenured faculty member: the service work, the budget cuts, the endless meetings and the department politics. Nobody ever pursued a career in teaching for those things. Once every so often, something happens to remind me just how lucky I am and how wonderful it is to be a university professor. Sometimes a student writes a clean and thoughtful paper that provides me with a new perspective. Sometimes I attend a graduation ceremony and see the joy on the faces of my students' parents who themselves never attended college. Sometimes in the middle of nowhere in the desert I can share some insight with my students or laugh about something ridiculous around a campfire. Those moments, as fleeting as they might be, make the less enjoyable aspects of my job fade away into the background and reignite the spark that keeps me going.