Two College of LAS professors named University Scholars
History professor Robert Morrissey and Professor of chemistry Joaquín Rodríguez-López have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.
The scholars program recognizes faculty excellence and provides $15,000 to each scholar for three years to enhance their academic careers. The money may be used for travel, equipment, research assistants, books, or other purposes.
“The University Scholars program celebrates the remarkable achievements of the named individuals,” said Nicholas Jones, the University of Illinois System’s executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs. “Our faculty represent the strong foundation of the world-class academic experience that contributes to the betterment of society and draws students and researchers to the U of I System universities from across the globe. The University Scholars are exemplars of that faculty excellence.
“When you consider the diversity of scholarship across all three of our universities and the standards of academic excellence that we nurture and grow through our recruitment of esteemed educators and researchers, all of our University Scholar recipients should be deservedly proud of the honor.”
The two recipients, as described by their nominators:
Morrissey has established a national and international reputation that places him alongside major scholars in the highly competitive field of early American history. In addition to being designated a Helen Corley Petit Scholar and earning a 2016 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award, he was named a Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar in 2016 and was chosen as the Mellon-Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Faculty Fellow in Environmental Humanities in 2018.
Since earning tenure in 2016, he has published nine articles and book chapters including the introduction of a volume he coedited, an article on Native Americans in the “Cambridge History of the American Revolution,” and an article on the French Midwest in the “Oxford Handbook of Midwestern History.” Morrissey advised and helped publish an online student-edited book of undergraduate writing in “Environmental Humanities, Defining Environments: Critical Studies in the Natural World” and edited an online interdisciplinary publication, “Flatland: New Directions in Environmental Humanities.”
Morrissey has been on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students almost every semester and received the department’s George and Gladys Queen Excellence in Teaching Award. His successes as a mentor for environmental humanities projects, senior theses and honors projects were recognized in 2020 when he received the Undergraduate Mentor of the Year award from the Campus Honors Program for his work advising James Scholars.
In 2020, he helped launch a new collaborative partnership around art history and practice among Illinois-descended tribal communities. In 2021, he received a major grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Humanities Without Walls Consortium for the project, “Reclaiming Stories,” which provides an opportunity for community members and tribal artists and cultural officers to travel to Europe to reconnect with 18th-century animal hide paintings in museum collections there.
Rodríguez-López has taught undergraduate and graduate lecture courses, appearing five times on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students and receiving the 2023 School of Chemical Sciences Teaching Award. He has been outstanding as a research advisor, mentoring 30 graduate students, 10 postdocs, nine visiting graduate students, three master’s students, and 28 undergraduate students. Eleven of these undergraduates have been co-authors on research publications.
Rodríguez-López created “The Electrochemistry Bootcamp,” which combines laboratory and classroom instruction on the basics of electrochemistry for a three-day immersive experience for young scientists from all over the world.
In his 11 years of service at Illinois, Rodríguez-López has won 20 distinctions, fellowships, and awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Arthur F. Findeis Award from the American Chemical Society, Division of Analytical Chemistry, and the Zhaowu Tian Prize for Energy Electrochemistry. He has published over 115 papers and has delivered over 130 invited talks at major conferences and universities around the world.
His research with scanning electrochemical microscopy and lasers will help build better batteries and his efforts in energy storage made him a leader within the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a $200 million initiative of the Department of Energy.
