Three ARHU Faculty Win Do Good Innovator Awards

Perla M. Guerrero, Peter Mallios and Shevaun Lewis are among 57 staff and faculty from across campus who received the award.

By ARHU Staff 

Three ARHU faculty members have been recognized with a Provost’s Do Good Innovator Award, which recognizes excellence by members of the campus community who “create, nurture, expand and amplify social impact through education, programs, and research, both in and outside the classroom.” 

Perla M. Guerrero, associate professor of American studies; Peter Mallios, executive director of the Honors College and professor of English; and Shevaun Lewis, assistant director of the Language Science Center are among 57 staff and faculty from across campus who received the award.  

Each was nominated by colleagues who recognized the broad and meaningful impact they create. The award reflects their commitment to UMD’s Do Good Campus core values: experiential learning; social impact; diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging; service to humanity; collaboration; and innovation.

Learn more about the ARHU winners below: 

Since Perla M. Guerrero joined UMD in 2011, she has had an incredible impact on students who identify as first-gen, immigrant (generally), and Latina/o, specifically. One of her co-curricular programs, “Artistic Interventions After Deportation and Return,” offers UMD students the opportunity to learn from formerly undocumented immigrants who are now in their country of origin. The weeklong series of events reveals how people are advocating for their mobility, organizing in two countries and drawing from their K-12 education in the United States.

Peter Mallios created and co-taught the course ENGL388B: “Mass Incarceration and Prison Education: Academic Writing in Prison.” Over years spent developing the course and building on his experience working with the Goucher Prison Education Partnership, he collaborated with four co-teachers, community partners and undergraduate students to study mass incarceration and develop a pedagogy for teaching people who are incarcerated.

Shevaun Lewis has created infrastructure for a paradigm-shifting model of autism research, one where autistic individuals’ goals are prioritized and their lived experiences inform research questions, methods and data interpretation. This is a dramatic departure from traditional approaches, where non-autistic individuals do research on autistic people, and neurodivergent behaviors are automatically interpreted as deficits.

Learn more here.

Photo (left to right): Perla M. Guerrero, Peter Mallios and Shevaun Lewis.