Frank J. Goodnow Award Recipients

Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Stephen and Evalyn Milman of 2Cornell University, and K.C. Morrison of Mississippi State University are this years winner for the Frank J. Goodnow Award.

The Goodnow Award recognizes distinguished service to the profession and the Association, by necessarily a career of scholarship. This service may be by individuals, groups, and public and private organizations who 1have  played a role in the development of the political science profession and the building of the American Political Science Association. Congratulations Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and K.C. Morrison!

The Frank Johnson Goodnow Award was established by the APSA Council in 1996 to honor service to the community of teachers, researchers, and public servants who work in the many fields of politics. Frank J. Goodnow, the first president of the American Political Science Association, a pioneer in the development of judicial politics, and former president of Johns Hopkins University, is an exemplar of the public service and volunteerism that this award represents.

Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor of
American Studies, Department of Government, Cornell University

Dr. Mary Katzenstein’s career, combining the highest caliber of scholarship and the strongest commitment to public service, thoroughly exemplifies the spirit of the Goodnow award. Her nineteen nominators from all over the US, the United Kingdom, and Australia, wrote evocatively of one of her most notable contributions: her creation of the Cornell Prison Education Program and Felon Rights. Of this extraordinary work, through which Dr. Katzenstein puts her knowledge and experience at the service of convicted felons who seek education, Mary has said this:

Part of my career has been aimed at demonstrating (post tenure!) that “engaged learning” can play a significant role in the construction of political science as a discipline … and to service to the ‘profession’ broadly construed…. I have tried to ‘demonstrate’ that it is possible as a scholar … to work to disseminate the study of politics and other disciplines outside a narrow definition of the academy….[W]hat has been most gratifying about this work is to be able to demonstrate that it is possible to establish an educational program, to find funding (the program began on a shoe string and now raises about $200,000 a year), and to involve large numbers of both Cornell students and “prison” students in an ambitious degree program.

Her integration of this exceptional public service with her scholarship has been recognized in recent years by the APSA’s Heinz Eulau Award Committee, who gave her and her colleagues the Eulau Award for the best article published in Perspectives on Politics in 2011…just one example of her commitment to representing the finest aspirations of our discipline by using rigorous scholarship to benefit the commonweal and the most vulnerable citizens among us.

Minion Kenneth Chauncey “KC” Morrison, Professor and Head, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Mississippi State University

“KC” Morrison has honored our discipline by the scholarship in African American Studies and the politics of race he has disseminated in books, journal articles, films, and even exhibition catalogues. His nominators from among his former colleagues in the University of Missouri system, current colleagues at Mississippi State, as well as former students, note that an even greater contribution as an “ambassador for the discipline” is his wide-ranging, tireless mentorship of students.

Whether he was taking Missouri students to the Unviersity of Ghana or or teaching Ghanaian students in Africa, being the kind of administrator who worked to create institutions to serve students well, mentor doctoral students, or steadfastly motivating undergraduate students to pursue careers in political science, Dr. Morrison has been the kind of professional for whom the Goodnow Award was created.

Some of his career recognitions – including the University of Missouri Faculty Alumni Award, a Diversity Enhancement Award, a Martin Luther King Community Award from Columbia, Missouri, and a Barbara Jordan Leadership Award from the Big Eight Conference, recognize his contributions to broadening and deepening our understanding of race and politics through scholarship, teaching, mentorship, and public service. Dr. Morrison has enriched our discipline by his own work and by bringing successive generations of students to the field.

Award Committee:
Susan Tolleson-Rinehart, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Tony Affigne, Providence College
Martha Joynt-Kumar, Towson State University

Recipients:
Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Cornell University
K.C. Morrison, Mississippi State University