Chartier is winner of AU Excellence in Scholarship Award

04/06/2021 ASHLAND, Ohio -- The winner of this year's Ashland University Excellence in Scholarship Award is Dr. Chris Chartier, associate professor of Psychology.

The two semi-finalists were Dr. Jennifer Rathbun, professor of Foreign Languages, and Dr. Greg McBrayer, assistant professor of Political Science.

The award, which consists of a medal to be worn with regalia and a $3,000 honorarium, recognizes AU faculty who have demonstrated outstanding scholarship.  All AU faculty who have completed their third-year review (with the exception of past recipients and Trustees’ Distinguished Professors) may be nominated for the award.

To qualify, a faculty member’s scholarship must be demonstrated by outstanding scholarly contributions, including  scholarly written work, creative work and other scholarly distinctions.

Chartier, who also is the founder and director of the Psychological Science Accelerator, came to AU in 2013.  He teaches courses in General Psychology I, Research Methods, Advanced Research Methods and Social Psychology and has been published in research journals such as Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. His research interests include tacit coordination and pro-social behavior.

Rathbun, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Wichita State University and a doctorate in Contemporary Latin American Literature from the University of Arizona, has translated and published complete poetic works by Mexican authors Alberto Blanco, Minerva Margarita Villarreal, Juan Armando Rojas Joo and Ivan Vergara. She is the co-editor of the anthologies of poetry Sangre mía / Blood of Mine: Poetry of Border Violence, Gender and Identity in Ciudad Juárez (2013) and Canto a una ciudad en el desierto (2004) . In 2018, Artepoética Press published Rathbun’s translation of La llama inclinada/The Inclined Flame by Colombian author Carlos Satizábal and her poetry, translations and articles on contemporary Latin American literature have appeared in numerous international reviews and journals.  

McBrayer, who joined the university in 2017, teaches courses in political philosophy and international relations, while also serving as director of Core Curriculum. Prior to coming to Ashland, he was an assistant professor at Morehead State University, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University, and a visiting assistant professor at Gettysburg College. McBrayer Has published articles in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy and Kentron: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Antique, as well as reviews in Interpretation, The Journal for Hellenic Studies, The American Journal of Islamic Social Science, and Political Science Quarterly, co-authored Plato’s Euthydemus (Focus, 2011) and is the editor of Xenophon: The Shorter Writings.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Emory University, his master’s from the University of Georgia and his doctorate from the University of Maryland.

Ashland University is a mid-sized, private university conveniently located a short distance from Akron, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Ashland University (www.ashland.edu) offers each of its student constituencies The Ashland Promise, including “teaching students how to think, not what to think”. Committed to affordability, the University now offers incoming residential freshman the Tuition Relief Scholarship, as well as a variety of new forms of financial assistance for both new and continuing students. ###