Dr. Courtney Collins and Dr. Caki Wilkinson were presented with Rhodes College’s highest honors conferred on faculty at the college’s annual Awards Convocation held May 2 on campus.
Collins, associate professor and chair of economics, received the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Teaching, which is a recognition of pedagogical excellence. Wilkinson, professor of English and director of creative writing, received the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, which is a recognition of major scholarly or creative contributions to one’s discipline.
The awards, first given in 1981, were established by businessman and Rhodes alumnus Clarence Day and are provided by the Day Foundation.
More about the recipients:
Dr. Courtney Collins graduated from Rhodes (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics from Texas A&M in 2010 and began her teaching career at Rhodes in 2013.
“In all the letters we received from her colleagues and students, her commitment to her alma mater is unmistakable,” said Dr. Timothy Huebner, provost and vice president for academic affairs, who made the presentation. “Her colleagues consider her ‘an exceptional educator.’ They praise her for embodying an ideal combination of rigor and passion. As one of them puts it, Courtney “sets high academic standards, fosters student success, and inspires a love of learning in all who have the privilege of working with her.”
Students wrote testimonials about what Collins’ teaching has meant to them. One nominator wrote, “Dr. Collins is willing to go above and beyond for her students. Whether it is hopping on a Zoom call at 9 p.m., answering questions in a clear way during class, or providing valuable resources to understand complicated material, she is willing to do what is necessary to help her students.”
Another commented, “Professor Collins has also been my mentor through the research process. We are currently co-authoring an honors thesis paper, which we are submitting to econometric and sabermetric journals for peer review. I would not be anywhere close to achieving my first publication without her guidance.”
Other nominators applauded Collins for helping “her students grow as people” and her office being a “place to talk about life—not just economics.”
“No wonder her office hours are always busy, with students stopping by for brief or extended conversations,” said Huebner. “During each of those conversations, Courtney gets to know her students as individuals, so that she can mentor them based on their needs, experiences, and backgrounds. A colleague sums up her recipe for success in this way: ‘a disarming sense of humility, self-disclosure, and good humor that helps students to see her as human and approachable.’”
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Dr. Caki Wilkinson as an undergraduate at Rhodes participated in the Department of English’s Creative Writing program that she now directs. She graduated (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Rhodes in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in English. She also holds an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from the University of Cincinnati.
Wilkinson joined Rhodes as assistant professor of English in 2012 and earned tenure in 2018. She was promoted to full professor this spring and currently serves as the Connie Abston Chair in Literature.
“Today’s recipient of this award is a nationally recognized and lauded poet of extraordinary breadth, wit, craft, and elegance,” said Huebner in making the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity presentation.
Those who nominated Wilkinson commented on her outstanding mentoring of students in creative writing and poetry, with one noting, “Students who work with Caki are identifiable by the fine and rigorous attunement to form and language that Caki brings to her teaching as well as to her own writing.” In addition to her mentoring of Rhodes students, Wilkinson teaches in the Sewanee Writers Program, one of the most prestigious summer writing workshops in the country.
Wilkinson’s poems have been featured in national outlets including The Atlantic, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker, and she has published three prize-winning volumes of poetry—Circles Where The Heads Should Be (2011), The Wynona Stone Poems (2015), and The Survival Expo (2021). Her most recent book was reviewed in The New York Times, with her work described as “delightful, clever, sometimes wrenching, sometimes rhyming and always clear verse and prose.”
One nominator wrote, “It’s rare for a poet to receive this much notoriety, this much agreement from critics, readers, and peers . . . Every line in The Survival Expo is the work of a poet working at the highest level.”