College Honors Faculty for Excellence in Teaching

February 2, 2015—On January 27, 2015, three College professors—Rev. David Collins, S.J., Anthony DelDonna, and Cristina Sanz—received the 2014 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. The professors were recognized at the 2014–15 Convocation of the College Faculty.

Candidates, who are put forth by their departments, are often nominated numerous times before getting selected for the award. During his opening remarks at Convocation, Dean Gillis said that the awards remain competitive year after year.

Rev. David Collins, S.J., Department of History

Rev. David Collins, S.J., is a native of Washington, DC. After 20 years of Jesuit training and doctoral studies that took him to Philadelphia, Boston, Munich, and Chicago, among other venues, he returned in 2004 to join the history department at Georgetown. He is an intellectual and cultural historian of the late Middle Ages. He has published extensively on the cult of the saints, Renaissance humanism, and learned magic, especially in Germany. Father Collins entered the Society of Jesus in 1987 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1998.

Father Collins teaches courses such as Introduction to Early History; Magic, Science, and Religion in Europe; Saints and Society; and Europe from the Millennium to the Black Death.

Anthony DelDonna, Department of Performing Arts

Anthony DelDonna is a specialist in 18th-century topics and in particular Neapolitan music, musicians, and culture. He earned a Ph.D. in historical musicology “with distinction” from the Catholic University of America. His research has focused primarily on opera, archival studies, performance practice, and ballet. DelDonna’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Eighteenth-Century Studies, Early Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, Recercare, Studi musicali, and Civiltà musicale as well as essays in scholarly volumes dedicated to the 18th century. He is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth Century Opera (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and editor for Genre and Music in the 18th century (Steglein Press, 2008). His transcription of the oratorio Trionfo per l’Assunzione della Santissima Vergine (Nicola Ceva, 1705) will be published by Fondazione Arcadia.

DelDonna’s courses include Musical Culture: European Tradition, Opera History, and Music of the Baroque Era.

Cristina Sanz, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Cristina Sanz is a professor of Spanish and linguistics. She directs the intensive and School of Foreign Service Spanish programs, the Barcelona Summer Program, and the Catalan Lectureship. An expert on multilingualism, her edited volume, Mind and Context in Adult SLA, received the 2006 MLA’s Mildenberger Award. Sanz has published over 60 articles and books chapters in scholarly venues such as the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Language Learning, Applied Psycholinguistics, Modern Language Journal, Applied Linguistics, IRAL, Language Learning and Technology, and Neuropsychologia. Sanz has taught graduate courses in Spain and the Philippines and has educated generations of language teachers for over 20 years. She has been a consultant to the United Nations, the Instituto Cervantes, and the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE).

Sanz teaches intensive-track Spanish courses and courses on bilingualism and teaching Spanish.