Hollins University recognized Professor of Spanish Alison Ridley and Associate Professor of Communication Studies Vladimir Bratic with two of the institution’s highest awards during the annual Founder’s Day Convocation on February 19.
Ridley received the Roberta A. Stewart Service Award, which honors Hollins employees who demonstrate long-term service, loyalty to the university and its principles, and deep caring for students and colleagues. Stewart was a professor and administrator at Hollins for 40 years and the award was established in 1993.
Ridley joined the Hollins faculty in 1991 as an assistant professor of Spanish and went on to earn promotion to associate professor in 1997 and the rank of full professor in 2013. She has also served as both chair and clerk of the faculty, chair of her academic department, and director of general education at Hollins. In the latter role, she led the implementation and assessment in 2001 of a new general education program, “Education through Skills and Perspectives,” the first significant reform of general education at Hollins in more than 20 years.
In 2006, as dean of academic services, Ridley was instrumental in creating Hollins’ first-year seminar program. For her work on this initiative, she was selected two years later as one of the 10 Outstanding First-Year Student Advocates in the United States.
The Herta T. Freitag Faculty Legacy Award was presented to Bratic in recognition of his recent scholarly and creative accomplishments. These reflect the extraordinary academic standards set by Freitag, who served as professor of mathematics at Hollins from 1948 to 1971.
Since joining the Hollins faculty in 2006, Bratic has developed as distinguished body of scholarship on the impact of media in peace building. He has written five peer-reviewed journal articles, seven book chapters, and five other publications on this topic. He has also been working on a book that integrates all of his previous work into a unified study on the history of this field over the last three decades.
Bratic has been recognized both nationally and internationally for his expertise. He has worked for several years with the United States Institute for Peace in Washington, D.C., in an advisory capacity. Two years ago, he spent eight days in Israel and Palestine, visiting Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jaffa, where he interacted with activists and legal experts. He gave a series of lectures on the Peace Boat, an anti-nuclear proliferation NGO. He has been invited to lecture at colleges and universities ranging from Virginia Tech, James Madison University, and Central Connecticut State University to Al Quds University in Palestine, Netanya Academic College in Israel, and Sarajevo University in Bosnia.
