English Professor Wins Regents Award
March 11, 2015
Professor Randy Ontiveros calls award his proudest achievement.
The College of Arts and Humanities congratulates Associate Professor of English Randy Ontiveros for being named a 2015 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award winner for excellence in teaching.
The award is the highest honor that the board bestows upon faculty for exemplary achievement. Awardees receive $1,000 and a plaque.
Ontiveros received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Irvine in 2001 and 2006, respectively. He also received his B.A. in English from Biola University in 1997. Ontiveros’ main research area is U.S. Latina/o literary and culture studies. He also teaches contemporary American literature and is launching a new I-Series course on “Literary Maryland.”
Ontiveros called the Regents’ Award his “proudest professional accomplishment to date.” He mentioned Diablo Valley College English Professor Keith Mikolavich and Virginia Doland, an English professor at Biola University, as teachers who helped him discover “a love for learning.”
“I try to follow the example of my mentors by giving students skills they can use after graduation, by helping them connect what they learn to the world past Route 1, and by inspiring in them the conviction that curiosity is an important part of pursuing the good life,” Ontiveros said. “This award makes me think I’m on the right track.”
The Regents’ Award is not the first honor for Ontiveros’ work at UMD. In 2007-08, he was chosen as a Center for Teaching Excellence-Lilly Teaching Fellow. His cohort researched how UMD could improve the experience of transfer students to the university. As someone who started his post-secondary education at a community college, the project was “especially close to my heart,” Ontiveros said.
In 2010, Ontiveros published “No Golden Age: Television News and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement” in the journal American Quarterly. The article has been influential in American media studies and Chicano/Chicana studies and exemplifies his interest in the ways that cultural forms shape and are shaped by political life, Ontiveros said. The article became part of his 2013 book “In the Spirit of a New People: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement” (NYU Press).
A total 17 faculty members from the university system received Regents’ awards for 2015-16, including five from UMD. Ontiveros is the only ARHU member to be named.
For more information on the Regents’ awards: http://www.usmd.edu/usm/academicaffairs/regfac.txt
A full list of UMD Regents Award winners can be found at: http://faculty.umd.edu/awards/list_regents.html