USD's Goljani Amirkhiz and Fitzsimmons Honored with Distinguished Dissertation Awards
The dissertation awards are presented annually to doctoral students who, in the opinion of the award committee, have completed dissertations representing original work that makes an unusually significant contribution to their disciplines.
David Swanson, Ph.D., professor of biology, nominated Goljani Amirkhiz for the award.
"In summary, Reza’s dissertation work moves the field of habitat selection modeling forward by developing novel approaches and applying these approaches at multiple hierarchical levels to identify appropriate scales for predicting bird occurrence and abundance,” Swanson said. “These are important advances to current habitat selection modeling technique and theory and will be widely applicable for other species and, thus, will be greatly beneficial to conservation planning generally. Reza’s broad quantitative skillset, including remote sensing, habitat modeling and biostatistics, will contribute to his future success as an outstanding scientist and conservation biologist who will continue to make important and innovative contributions to these fields."
Darlene Farabee, Ph.D., chair of the English department, nominated Fitzsimmons for the award.
"Fitzsimmons breaks new ground by examining under-examined plays and proves the importance of these plays with her carefully crafted, well-researched readings of theater and literature theorists, such as Brecht and Boal,” said Farabee. “Through her approach, Fitzsimmons contributes to multiple fields. This dissertation explores questions of performance that will be of interest to theater professionals and academics, questions of pedagogy that will be useful in the classroom and on the university stage, and questions of meta-theater and dramatic structure that will be important to literary scholars who approach these plays in the future."
As USD award winners, Goljani Amirkhiz and Fitzsimmons will represent the university at the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) Distinguished Dissertations Awards at the CGS Annual Meeting in December 2023.
