The Bennion Center would like to announce this year’s Faculty Award Winners and offer congratulations and gratitude for their incredible service to Utah communities.

The Distinguished Faculty Service Award honors a faculty member who has demonstrated a commitment to the campus-community connection through a life of active, unpaid community service and the integration of service with research and teaching.

The 2021 Distinguished Faculty Service Award winner is Professor Cathleen Zick of the Family & Consumer Studies Department, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. During her 39 years of teaching and scholarship at the University of Utah, she served as  Director of the Masters in Public Policy Program, the Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Science, and as Department Chair of Family and Consumer Studies. As her nominators shared, Professor Zick’s “integration of research, service, and teaching has provided real and long-lasting relationships” for students and community partners alike. She prioritized investing her “formidable skill set to engage with students, local communities and national stakeholders to improve the lives of those around her in sustained and important service”. It is clear that many citizens of Utah and students at the University of Utah benefitted from her decades of meaningful research and community engagement.

This year’s Public Service Professor Award winner is Professor Milad Hosseini-Mozari of the Multi-Disciplinary Design (MDD) Program in the College of Architecture and Planning. This significant award is designed to help a faculty member strengthen community-engaged learning experiences and foster stronger partnerships with the local community. Professor Hosseini-Mozari will utilize this award to launch an innovation hub between the MDD Program and the International Rescue Committee (IRC). It will be a collaborative space where digital access and increased tech literacy will be supported for a community that has historically experienced inequity in technological access. Professor Hosseini-Mozari comes from the community of focus, as an immigrant himself, and will serve as a bridge between students and refugees to build technological know-how and amplify immigrant voices resulting in meaningful benefits to the immigrant community.