College of Arts & Sciences Honors Faculty and Staff at Spring 2026 Convocation
The College of Arts & Sciences is proud to honor the outstanding faculty and staff members who make up its exceptional community of scholars at the College’s Spring 2026 Faculty and Staff Convocation.
Three professors received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award: Kostadin Kushlev, Arik Levinson and Josiah Osgood; and two staff members received the Distinguished Staff Award: Colva Weissenstein (G’11) and Dr. Mary Beth Connell (M’89).
Abigail Marsh received the Farr Faculty Excellence Award, Dagomar DeGroot received the Stevens Faculty Excellence Award and Charles McNelis received the Tosetti Faculty Excellence Award. Diana Glick (G’91, G’95) received the Condé Nast Award.
From left to right: Charles McNelis, Arik Levinson, Dagomar Degroot, David Edelstein, Colva Weissenstein, Kostadin Kushlev and Diana Glick at the College’s Staff and Faculty Convocation held in Gonda Theatre. (Rafael Suanes)
“It’s important to recognize the great work that goes on in the College of Arts & Sciences in all areas,” said Dean David Edelstein. “We recognize the faculty for their teaching, research and service to this institution, for which we are all so grateful — especially the students, both undergrad and grad. We also recognize our staff. All of us who have been around Georgetown, around higher education institutions, know that it’s staff who are the glue in our institution and hold so much together and allow us to do the great work that we do on behalf of our students.”
Get to know the award recipients, their work at Georgetown and what makes them a proud member of the College.
Kostadin Kushlev, Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award
Kushlev, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and director of the Happy Tech Lab, received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
His research examines how digital technologies — especially smartphones and social media — impact well-being, fragment attention and promote or undermine social connection. His work aims to identify ways technology can be designed to support happier and healthier lives.
Arik Levinson, Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award
Levinson, a professor of economics at Georgetown University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
He is currently one of the editors of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Levinson’s recent projects calculate the degree to which industrialized countries have been offshoring their most polluting economic activities, and evaluate the way some industries and the U.S. government have proposed to calculate carbon emissions caused by grid-connected electricity use.
Josiah Osgood, Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award
Osgood, a professor in the Department of Classics, received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
Osgood has taught at Georgetown since 2002 and served as chair of the Classics department from 2016 to 2022. He regularly offers classes in Roman history and in Latin language and literature. For many years, he co-directed study abroad programs in which students visited archaeological sites in Greece, Turkey and Italy.
Osgood’s research focuses on politics in ancient Rome and he has written about civil war, Roman women and Roman historical writing, among other topics. He is currently working on research about senators and their families in imperial Rome.
Colva Weissenstein (G’11), Distinguished Staff Award
Weissenstein, the program manager for the American Studies Program, received the Distinguished Staff Award.
This award is given to staff who have a record of extraordinary service within a department or program, and who have demonstrated selflessness as people for others, cura personalis, commitment to community in diversity and creative leadership and service in support of academic excellence.
Weissenstein holds a B.A. in English from George Mason University and an M.A. in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown. With expertise in film and media studies — particularly horror cinema and advertising — as well as university administration, Weissenstein brings both intellectual curiosity and organizational care to her work.
Weissenstein is especially proud of cultivating a vibrant, supportive community among American Studies students and faculty, where collaboration and connection are central. Through sustaining beloved program traditions, including pedagogical field trips, she has helped foster a culture defined by curiosity, creativity and playfulness. Committed to joy as a meaningful part of academic life, she works to ensure that the program remains not only rigorous, but also welcoming, dynamic and deeply human.
Dr. Mary Beth Connell (M’89), Distinguished College Service Award
Connell, an associate dean and the director of Pre-Health Advising, received the Distinguished College Service Award.
This award is given to staff who have a record of extraordinary service within the College, and who have demonstrated selflessness as people for others, cura personalis, commitment to community in diversity and creative leadership and service in support of academic excellence.
In her roles at Georgetown, Connell oversees the advising of pre-health students, chairs the Pre-Health Recommendation Committee and directs the Post Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Certificate program, which is for students who have completed their undergraduate education in a non-science area and wish to change careers.
Connell received her M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1989. She also completed a residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation and practiced at INOVA Fairfax Hospital. She has served Georgetown University since 1993, initially through Georgetown’s Medical Alumni Board, then on the Board of Governors, Directors and Regents. Her favorite role is guiding students on their journey to a health professions career.
Abigail Marsh, Farr Faculty Excellence Award
Marsh, a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience and the co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Concentration in Cognitive Science, received the Farr Faculty Excellence Award (Natural, Quantitative and Interdisciplinary Science).
This award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovative dissemination of scientific knowledge.
Marsh received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and conducted post-doctoral research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Her research uses functional and structural brain imaging as well as behavioral, cognitive and pharmacological approaches and the study of special populations to answer the questions: How do we understand what others think and feel? What drives us to help other people? What prevents us from harming them?
She is the author of 100-plus peer-reviewed publications and an award-winning trade book, The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between. Her research has received awards that include the Cozzarelli Prize for scientific excellence and originality from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The S&R Foundation’s Kuno Award for Applied Science for the Social Good and the Richard J. Wyatt Fellowship award for translational research from NIMH. She is the co-founder of the Society for the Prevention of Disorders of Aggression.
Dagomar DeGroot, Stevens Faculty Excellence Award
Degroot, an associate professor of environmental history, received the Stevens Faculty Excellence Award (Social Science).
The award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovation in a social sciences field.
Degroot’s first book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018 and named by the Financial Times as one of the ten best history books of that year. His new book, Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System, was published by Harvard University Press and Penguin, and is a Scientific American, New Scientist and Nautilus book of the year. He is currently editing several books on past climate change, including the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Resilience in Climate History.
He also writes, narrates and produces The Climate Chronicles, an award-winning podcast, video series and website on the history of climate change. He has shared the unique perspectives of the past with policymakers, corporate leaders and journalists in many cities, from Wuhan to Washington, DC. Degroot teaches courses on such topics as existential risk, space exploration and the history of climate change.
Charles McNelis, Tosetti Faculty Excellence Award
McNelis, a professor of Classics who also serves as the faculty director of Graduate Liberal Studies and the interim director of the Master of Arts in Engaged & Public Humanities program, received the Tosetti Faculty Excellence Award (Humanities).
The award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovation in the humanities.
McNelis has been a member of the faculty since 2002. He teaches Latin at all levels, as well as a range of courses on ancient Greek and Latin literature and culture.
His research focuses on the connections between Greek and Latin literature, particularly in the genre of epic poetry. He is the author of Statius’ Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War and The Alexandra of Lycophron, co-written with Alexander Sens. Most recently, he has published a commentary on Statius’ Achilleid, a poem which takes as its subject Achilles, the greatest Greek hero. McNelis received his undergraduate degree in Classics from Columbia University, his M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles.
Diana Glick (G’91, G’95), Condé Nast Award
Glick, a teaching professor of the Department of Chemistry, received the Condé Nast Award.
Founded in 1966 by the Georgetown College Student Council to honor the memory of the first president of the student body, this award is given by the College of Arts & Sciences to faculty who have served the College with distinguished teaching, research, service and leadership.
For more than 30 years on the Hilltop, Glick has taught everything from general chemistry to inorganic and spectroscopic methods, working with both large lecture classes and small groups of majors. A passionate advocate for science education at all levels, Glick has developed courses for non-science majors and championed the integration of research throughout the undergraduate experience.
Glick earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University wherein she developed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic techniques for polyoxometalate complexes. Since 2010, she has served as director of undergraduate studies and as faculty advisor to the student chemistry community, roles through which she has mentored countless students. Her efforts were further recognized in 2015 when she received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
She is known across campus for helping students find confidence in challenging subjects — and on occasion, even convincing them that chemistry can be fun. She continues to believe that small moments in the classroom can make a lasting difference in a student’s life.