Brandeis Magazine

John-Andrew Morrison ’95 was nominated for a 2022 Tony Award in the Best Featured Actor in a Musical category for his role as Thought 4 in “A Strange Loop.” Two years ago, Morrison’s performance in the same role earned him off-Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Award. A musical about identity, race, sexuality and theater, “A Strange Loop” premiered off-Broadway in 2019 and opened on Broadway in April. At the Tony Award ceremonies in June, it was named the year’s best new musical.

In June, David Weil stepped down from his post as dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. He will spend the next year on a sabbatical leave. Heller’s Maria Madison, associate dean of equity, inclusion and diversity, and director of the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity, has been named interim dean, a position she will hold for at least a year. Madison is a global public-health researcher, with an ScD in population and international health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Six faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences earned teaching, mentoring and service awards in 2022. Keith Plaster, senior lecturer in linguistics, received the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Gregory Childs, assistant professor of history, was given the Michael L. Walzer ’56 Award for Teaching. Jill Greenlee, associate professor of politics, earned the Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer ’69 and Joseph Neubauer Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. Sarah Lamb, professor of anthropology, and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and the Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanistic Social Sciences, received the Faculty Service Award. And Thomas Fai, assistant professor of mathematics, and Grace Han, assistant professor of chemistry, were presented with the Dean’s Mentoring Award.

The Heller School for Social Policy and Management was named No. 8 in the area of health policy and management and No. 10 (tied with Princeton University) in the area of social policy in the 2023 U.S. News & World Report rankings of public-affairs graduate schools. Heller also placed No. 26 (tied with Brown University and the University of Virginia) in the area of public policy analysis.

The Women’s Power Gap Initiative and the American Association of University Women ranked Brandeis University No. 5 out of 130 major U.S. research universities in a comprehensive “gender index” that sought to document R1 universities’ success in the area of gender diversity among their most highly compensated professionals. Brandeis was also ranked No. 2 for its percentage of female academic deans and No. 6 for its percentage of tenured full professors who are women. Four of the university’s five heads of schools are women (Wendy Cadge, Kathryn Graddy, Dorothy Hodgson and Lynne Rosansky), as is the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs (Carol Fierke).

Wangui Muigai, assistant professor of African and African American studies and history, has been named a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, becoming the second Brandeis faculty member to be chosen by the fellowship program, which recognizes humanities and social-sciences scholars and writers whose work addresses enduring issues confronting society. Muigai, one of 28 individuals selected as a Carnegie Fellow this year, is a historian of medicine and science whose research focuses on race, health and reproduction. Brandeis’ Sarah Lamb, a cultural anthropologist who focuses on aging and gender, was named a Carnegie Fellow in 2019.